This Voith-built paper mill is the largest in the world.
  
China’s Hainan Province is home to the largest paper mill in the world, owned by Singapore-based Asia Pulp and Paper (which has offices in Mississauga, ON). The Hainan Jinhai Pulp & Paper Industry Co. Ltd. mill includes the world’s largest paper machine, the Hainan PM2, built by Voith Paper of Heidenheim, Germany. It’s now celebrating one year of production. 
 
The PM2 is certainly huge. The Voith paper machine is 428 m long and it is 11.6 m wide, producing paper that is 10.96 m wide. 
 
When westerners think about industrial China, they have an image of pollution, old machinery and primitive conditions. That may have been true a few decades ago, but is not always the case now. However, in the past, APP has been at the centre of many environmental controversies. According to a well-referenced report in Wikipedia, in January 2008 the office retailer Staples ended its 11-year relationship with APP "due to their clear lack of progress in improving their environmental performance." Other companies, including Office Depot and Wal-Mart, had cut ties previously on environmental grounds, and these have been followed more recently by Australian retailer Woolworths Limited. As recently as July 2010, 40 European environmental organizations signed a letter to the paper industry demanding to stop any eventual purchase of paper from APP 
 
Construction of the giant Hainan PM2 began in 2007 and the facility opened in 2011. Here are some stats APP is promoting about the paper machine:
– The machine is longer than six North American football fields
– Annual capacity of more than one million metric tons of paper (it can also produce high-quality calendars, brochures, packaging and folding boxes)
– The Hainan PM2 is capable of producing large volumes of paper with a low environmental footprint using sustainable natural resources
– Over $400 million was spent on environmental protection facilities at this mill, including an investment in the world’s largest alkali recovery boiler. With this new boiler, 95% of the alkali generated here is recycled
– Fresh water consumption runs at only five litres per kilogram of paper, half of the 10.5-litre minimum required by the Chinese regulation and lower than the 8 litres per kilogram which is the average in European production. This low use of water in turn reduces the quantity of effluent from the plant. Further, the mill’s own water preparation system has a capacity of 100,000 cubic metres per day. 
 
Siemens supplied all the drives and electrical equipment for the fine paper line at Hainan, Pulp and Paper Canada reports. That included 185 Sinamics drive systems with a total connected power output of more than 40 MW for the PM2, as well as the drives for roll cutters, re-winders, and offline calenderers. 
 
According to Pulp and Paper Canada, APP-China is one of a new breed of pulp and paper producers in China. "We have changed many, many things about the paper industry in China," Sophy Huang, PR director for APP-China, told the magazine (a sister publication to Machinery & Equipment MRO). “The company bought and built modern, efficient mills with up-to-date environmental controls, in contrast with China’s thousands of small, inefficient, outdated producers.” 
 
Despite global mass marketing efforts to reduce the use of paper, demand for paper products and consumption has increased. According to the China Paper Industry Almanac 2010, “the business environment forecast for paper and paperboard products remains strong, with an increase in demand coupled with an uptick in output. China’s overall paper demand is projected to grow to 143 million tons in 2021, approximately 300% growth over the past 15 years.” 
 
 
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