Indian firms plan paper plant

India – In India, multi-business conglomerate ITC and prominent waste management engineering firm Ramky Group are working towards the establishment of a paper board manufacturing plant which would use recovered paper as its raw material.

Although the location has yet to be finalised, Ramky will set up the plant while ITC will support the project by strengthening recovered paper collection channels from households and offices through its Wealth Out of Waste (WOW) programme, according to Sanjay Singh, Divisional Chief Executive of ITC’s Paperboard Division. ‘It may take about two years for the project to come up,’ he is quoted as saying. ‘First, we will have to strengthen the source collection channels.’ A plant with 100 000 tonnes of annual capacity would cost around US$ 45 million, he added.
According to Ramky’s Chairman Ayodhya Rami Reddy, the company has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with ITC to take the project forward. His company has already set up a 100 000-tonnes-per-annum capacity paper board manufacturing plant at Coimbatore which includes recovered paper and other recyclables in the raw material mix. Meanwhile, ITC runs a 500 000-tonne paper and paper board plant at Bhadrachalam in Andhra Pradesh.
‘Through the WOW project, we are collecting about 36 000 tonnes of waste per annum and 60% of this is paper,’ noted Mr Singh. ‘We are working on increasing the waste collection to about 5000 tonnes per month by March 2012.’