Rottneros and South Africa’s NCT Forestry Cooperative have signed a letter of intent to buil a bleached chemi-thermomechanical pulp (BCTMP) plant in Richards Bay, South Africa. NCT hopes to sign a final agreement by the end of July.

            If the deal is implemented Rottneros plans to move the CTMP line from its Utansjo mill in Sweden to South Africa. The new pulp mill would initially have a capacity of 140,000 tonnes/yr and cost approximately SEK 1 bilion ($143 million) to set up. Output would mainly be exported to Europe and Asia, but could also be sold locally. The facility could come online 2009, which would mean that the Utansjo plant would run at current capacity until the end of 2008.

              In August, the Swedish company announced plans to shut down its 180,000 tonne/yr stone groundwood and CTMP mill in Utansjo, due to high electricity prices. The firm has been evaluating sites outside of Scandinavi for the relocation of the plant’s 100,000 tonne/yr CTMP line, which came on stream in April 2005, to a con-try with lower and more stable electricity prices than Sweden. Spruce to feed the plant is currently sourced locally and aspen is imported from the Baltic region.

            “South Africa offers [a] very good supply of eucalyptus wood and other raw materials at competitive prices, “the firm’s CEO, Lars Blecko, said in a statement. “ Our affiliate, NCT, markets 1.8 million tonnes of pulpwood yearly, of which 1 mil-lion tonnes is eucalypus, which is very well suited for the production of CTMP. In addition, the harbor town of Richards Bay on the Indian Ocean, where the factory will be situated, has very good infrastructure”.

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