No. 607: Japanese equipment goes to Russia to construct the world’s largest pulp mill (September 6, 2012)

Business trend: 
Marubeni is scheduled to get an order for constructing the world’s largest pulp mill from Russian for about 280 billion yen. The construction will start in the spring of 2013 and full-scale operation will start late 2017. The plant will be constructed in Krasnoyarsk in the central part of Russia. It will have an annual production capacity of 900,000 tons for paper manufacturing and 300,000 tons for fiber production. The total annual capacity of 1,200,000 tons is equivalent to 5% of the trade volume of softwood pulp worldwide. It is planned to ship 80% of pulp produced by the new plant to Asia including Japan.

Marubeni will adopt Japanese equipment for generation turbines using biomass fuel, effluent treatment facilities, and control systems featured by high environmental performance and cost competitiveness. Because Japan currently relies on North America and North Europe for softwood pulp, the Russian plant will help Japanese paper companies reduce production cost. The Japanese intention agrees with Russian intention because Russia has mostly been exporting lumber. Softwood pulp is stronger than hardwood pulp, it is vital for the production of wrapping paper and paper bags. Japanese investment in Russia has been growing. Japan and Russia are expected to agree with the cooperation to construct a base for the development of liquefied natural gas resources in Vladivostok in the APEC 2012 scheduled for this month. 

Krasnoyarsk in the central part of Russia where world’s largest pulp mill will be constructed under Marubeni’s initiative. The new pulp mill will have a combined production capacity of 1,200,000 tons per year for paper manufacturing and fiber production.