Introduction of advanced Metso Paper Technology into China

Abstract

Recently Chinese paper industries have been showing rapid development, in which Japanese papermakers have a serious interest. While the paper and board demands in advanced countries including Japan seem to have reached ceiling level, the paper and board demand in China still shows rapid increase. Total production of paper industries in China in 2002 was 37.8 million tons, which showed 8.4% increase compared to that a year before. Although new machines were installed in China year by year, the domestic demand of paper and board is expected to keep increasing due to further economic growth and large population of potential consumers. Metso Paper has a regional company in Beijing, Service Technology Center in Wuxi and Valmet-Xian as a joint-venture company in Xian, which enhance Metso Paper's business, production and customer service in China. Recent noteworthy point is that the world first OptiConcept machine was installed and started up in Nanping, China earlier than in European countries, and achieved satisfactory results. In this paper, the future prospect in Chinese paper industries and representative paper machine technologies delivered by Metso Paper are described.