The Hindu Business Line : Big mills turn to waste paper

Chennai, July 17 Large paper mills that have depended on virgin raw material will increasingly look at recycling paper to increase raw material availability, say industry experts.

Traditionally, for the large players — designated A-grade mills in industry terms — the source of fibre has been wood pulp or agro-waste such as bagasse, or imported pulp for manufacturing printing and writing paper.

Small players, focussed more on cost, use waste paper as a raw material to manufacture paper and for making boards.

But with increasing environmental concerns, the absence of a long-term policy on allocating land to the private sector for pulp wood plantation, and the fluctuation in international prices of pulp, large paper manufacturers are bound to look at waste paper as a supplement, say industry sources.

Mr N. K. Jain, President, Metso Paper India, says that limitations in final product quality has been a constraint for large mills using waste paper as raw material.

But in recent years developments in waste paper pulping technology have addressed this issue for the industry to use this as a supplementary source of pulp. Metso is a manufacturer of de-inking plant, which is the pulping facility for waste paper.

Also, waste paper is a raw material that can be sourced fast to match the rapidly growing demand for paper. The paper industry is growing 7-8 per cent annually, which means an additional 7,00,000 tonnes of paper a year.

Manufacturers cannot entirely depend on imported pulp because of fluctuating costs or source pulpwood domestically because of availability constraints or raise captive pulpwood under their ongoing social forestry schemes fast enough. So, the industry is exploring this option, he said.

Mr Jain pointed out that two mills — Subburaj Papers and Servalaksmi Paper Mills — have each set up a 300-tonne-a-day plant for printing and writing paper using recycled fibre in Tamil Nadu.

Among the large paper mills Century Pulp and Paper has a recycled paper plant.

The Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Ltd plans to set up a 300-tonne-a-day plant to recycle paper.

Recycled fibre

Official sources say that once TNPL sets up the de-inking plant to recycle waste paper, nearly a third of its raw material will be recycled fibre that would supplement bagasse and woodpulp.

This would be used for making printing and writing paper.

Another industry player, with a large presence in paper and boards, said future expansions by large players would take into account waste paper as a source of raw material.

Mills in developed countries in the West have up to 30 per cent of their capacity dependent on recycled component. The markets there set a premium on recycling as a measure of environment conservation.

This is a trend that is bound to catch on in India, which is also into exports.

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