New reports showed Shanying Paper – one of the top-3 industrial packaging paperboard producers in China – had completed the installation of a 400,000/mtpy recycled pulp line and began trial runs thereafter in its complex in Prachinburi, Thailand. Until then, Shanying ran a recycled pulp mill in the complex at the designed capacity of 700,000/mtpy. The launch of the new line, with equipment also provided by Kadant Inc., will expand Shanying's recycled pulp production capacity at the location to 1.1 million/mtpy.

Like many other mainstream industrial packaging paperboard producers in China, Shanying Paper is heavily dependent on recycled fiber as the main furnishing for board production and has been actively sourcing recovered paper in all key markets of the world. The ban by the Chinese government on recovered paper imports – which took effect from January 1st, 2021 – adds to the urgency of finding and developing new and alternative sources of fiber supply. The company acquired an idle paper mill with pulping facilities from Verso in Kentucky, USA in 2019 and renamed it as “Phoenix Paper'' in an attempt to rebuild it into a recycled pulp mill. While a number of issues are yet to be resolved in the locality as of today, the company’s investment in Thailand has gone ahead and become the company's flagship project in recycled pulp production overseas. It is expected that the pulp mill in Thailand will primarily consume OCC and other grades of recovered paper from USA and other parts of the world and ship the recycled pulp to Shanying’s paper and board mills in China - including the 1 million/mtpy industrial packaging paperboard project, which is in full speed construction in order to start up in early 2022, in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province - and neighboring Asian countries. The new business model appears to be less complicated and more cost effective than running and shipping recycled pulp from the USA for the time being at least.