Big Kinleith upgrade

Press, 4 January 1988, Page 8

Big Kinleith upgrade

PA Wellington NZFP Pulp and Paper, Ltd, is to spend “hundreds of millions” on upgrading its Kinleith mills near Tokoroa. The NZ Forest Products group company has confirmed that a $4 million feasibility and process engineering study to increase mill output by one third was already in progress.

The company’s managing director, Mr Ross Glucina, said the development was a natural progression from the recently completed N 0.5 recovery boiler at Kinleith. Its implementation would increase pulp and paper-mak-ing capacity from 400,000 to

530,000 tonnes a year. “This is probably the biggest capital project ever contemplated for Kinleith and we hope to have final plans for presentation to the board of our parent company by next May,” Mr Glucina said.

The modernisation would include new pulping facilities and higher volume papermaking. He emphasised that the project was still in the proving stage. There had been significant overruns on past major capital developments at Kinleith and he said they could not be repeated. Mr Glucina said the modernisation would do much to

restore NZFP Pulp and Paper as an internationally competitive exporter of pulp and paper products. “The problem at the moment is the over-priced New Zealand dollar and our high inflation and production costs.

“In the past two and a half years, there have been 10 continuous quarterly rises in the international selling price for market pulp.” These gains had been substantially eroded by the kiwi dollar appreciating 40 per cent against the US dollar and by an annual inflation rate of about 15 per cent, he said.