Papermaking industry strives to be environmentally friendly

The papermaking sector of the German energy company Voith Group has introduced a "Papermaking, Next level" strategy to make its papermaking process in China more environmentally friendly, according to a company executive.

"The strategy aims to increase the efficiency, productivity and quality of the entire paper production process, so as to bring about a more intelligent, cost-effective and sustainable process environment," said Dr. Gregor Wiche, the product & services president of Voith Paper Asia.

China is making positive changes in the papermaking industry to adopt clean and energy-saving technologies to strengthen environmental management. Stricter laws have pushed the industry towards being more environmentally friendly and energy efficient, according to Wiche.

"The past decade has seen China's papermaking equipment technology growing by leaps and bounds. About one-third [of] equipment can reach the world-class levels.

"Although digitization has a huge impact on papermaking in China, domestic paper industry has been actively developing and adopting advanced clean production and energy saving technology and equipment," said Wiche.

Voith Paper has nearly 2,000 employees and 13 branches in the Asia Pacific region. From the year 2006 to 2016, Voith has installed 54 sets of new paper machines in China. The production capacity is up to 1.72 billion tons.

The papermaking base in Kunshan, Zhejiang province, has become the world's largest papermaking machinery production base of Voith. During the past 5 years, Voith Paper has invested over 2 billion euros in the Kunshan base.