Following the investment decision taken in August 2001, Stora Enso is restructuring its newsprint production by building a new production line at Langerbrugge in Belgium that will use recovered paper as raw material. The new production line, which will also include a 75 MW biofuel power plant and a deinking plant, will start up in June 2003. As part of the production development programme, the company will as previously announced rebuild Langerbrugge's paper machine no. 3 to manufacture SC paper instead of newsprint and increase its annual capacity from 115 000 tonnes to 165 000 tonnes. This rebuilding will be completed by the end of 2002. The total investment cost of the whole project is about EUR 500 million.
In line with its strategy for printing paper, Stora Enso's asset improvement programme will continue to increase the competitiveness and specialization of the paper machines and eliminate production that will not be profitable over the long term. This investment programme will meet the ROCE requirement of 13 per cent set by the company and will be financed from cash flow.
The programme also includes shutting down two paper machines: Langerbrugge's 120 000 tonnes per year SC paper machine no. 2 in Belgium and Summa's 110 000 tonnes per year newsprint paper machine no. 1 in Finland. These two machines will be shut down when the new machine starts up.
Construction of the new production line has progressed on schedule, and main machine suppliers have been selected. The new paper machine will be supplied by Metso Paper, and the deinking and pulping suppliers will be Voith, Andritz-Ahlstrom, GL&V, Lamort and Valmet Raisio. The biofuel power plant has been ordered from Austrian Energy, which is an Austrian subsidiary of the German Babcock Borsig Power GmbH. The main consultant for the project is Jaakko Pöyry Oyj of Finland. Earthmoving at the site began at the end of November and work on foundations for the building will start in January.
On completion, paper machine no. 4 at Langerbrugge will be one of the world's largest newsprint paper machines, with a capacity of about 400 000 tonnes per year. The production line is expected to reach full capacity in 2005. The speed of the paper machine will be 2000 m/min and the wire width 11.1 metres. It will produce 45g/m2 newsprint, which will be marketed as one of Stora Enso Newsprint's products. Provisionally, it is intended to sell some 80 per cent of the output in Europe. About 10 million tonnes of newsprint are consumed in Europe per year, and Stora Enso's market share is approximately 25 per cent.
The deinking plant will utilize the latest technology for environmentally friendly production of pulp using less water. The aim of the investment is to achieve highly profitable manufacture of paper with low production costs by using, for example, a tandem press for dewatering the paper web, single-wire technology in drying and a closed paper web throughout the whole paper machine. The biofuel power plant consists of a state-of-the-art fluidized-bed boiler, which includes flue gas cleaning in accordance with strict EU regulations.
One aspect of Stora Enso's fibre strategy is to recycle fibre close to the source of this raw material and customers. The new production line will use only recovered paper as its raw material, most of which will be collected from within a distance of 300 kilometres, an area where nearly 80 million people live. On completion, the Langerbrugge mill will use about 700 000 tonnes of recovered paper per year.
Following the project, the Langerbrugge mill will provide about 450 permanent jobs. During the project about 1100 people will be working at the site on construction, installation and commissioning, including contractors and suppliers.
The project management members have been assembled from within Stora Enso's international organization, and most of them have experience of several paper machine builds or rebuilds. The project includes its own quality programme, and know-how and benchmarking from previous projects will be utilized in all sectors.
For further information, please contact:
Kari Vainio, Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications,
tel. +44 7799 34 81 97
Stig Andersson, Mill Manager, Stora Enso Magazine Paper, Langerbrugge Mill,
tel. +32 9 257 74 00
Sami S. Pitkänen, Project Manager, L4 Project, tel. +358 40 500 1988
For pictures, please visit our image bank
www.storaenso.com
The Newsprint Division's sales in 2000 was approximately 1 800 million euros. It employs some 5400 people and has thirteen paper machines producing newsprint at nine paper mills in Belgium, Finland, Germany, Sweden and Canada. The annual production capacity is nearly 3.2 million tonnes. The Stora Enso Langerbrugge N.V. mill is in Gent, Belgium. Paper production there started in 1932. In 1990 the mill was acquired by Stora, which in 1998 became part of Stora Enso. The Newsprint Division produces newsprint, book paper, directory paper and mechanical paper. Its main market is Western Europe.
