Day 3-4 Newsletter, 26-27th October 2013
“What is paper industry doing? It is creating forests, creating a habitat for hundreds of species of plants and animals, supporting the environment. Tell me, in what way is paper industry bad? Is there any other industry that grows forests? It must also be noted that paper industry uses not even 50 per cent of the trees it grows. These trees are going to some other industry. But still we are growing trees, because we care for the environment,” said Mr. Ashish De, Chief Executive-Project, JK Paper Limited.
Speaking about his Company’s latest project, Mr. De said, “Our commercial production will commence on October 31st. It is one of the biggest projects in the last forty years. So much of investment – nearly Rs. 1800 crores – has been made. In one particular area, in one particular time, no one has made such a huge investment. It is by far the most technologically advanced project. It has the latest fibre line technology from Andritz. As far as the paper machine is concerned, there are few technologies, which are being used for the first time in the country. These machines are used in only five or six places across the world. In India most of the paper companies invest a lot of money in pulp mill up to winder. After getting the winder, they don’t really think further. What happens is that you spend a lot of money on making an excellent product but you don’t do justice to the product, that is, how it is handled, packed and stored. In our Company, from the very beginning, we focus on how the finished goods will be handled. And as far as our paper machine is concerned, we started at 850 mpm, whereas most of the machines in the country are run not even at 500 mpm. And within six weeks, we crossed the capacity barrier – 1000+ mpm. And within a week’s time, we started producing saleable photo copier paper of excellent quality. For the first time in the country, we have installed online colour monitoring and control. This means that shade match will not be a visual comparative analysis now onwards.
“Not many in India correctly identify photocopier paper. Any A4 size paper is considered as photo copier paper. But it’s not true. Photo copier has got certain specific properties. In India, photo copier reaming and packing is done in a very conservative way. We have, from the very first day, gone for very high speed machine. We have ensured that whatever we have invested in must pay back quickly. You see photo copier paper is too much of a commodity; you cannot add too much value to it, like we do in the case of packaging board. So, we have to create huge efficiency difference to create wealth. In brief, we have gone for the latest technology and more efficiency.”
