Planned expansions are required
Indian paper industry with more than 550 mills is producing over 8 million tons of paper, paperboard and newsprint, which may go up to 15 million tons by 2015 and around 20 million tons by 2020. Most of the mills have already gone for expansion and upgradation of their plants as well as for modernization of their processes to make the quality of their product mix superior in order to meet the challenges in the years to come.
Paper Mart interacted with the chief executives of several paper mills of the country & through other industry sources learnt that almost every paper mill is now under expansion and modernization programme to enhance their installed capacity, especially for writing and printing grades of papers. Around 3 million tons capacity of writing and printing papers has been added since 2008 or is expected to be added by the end of 2012 to the existing installed capacity of around 3 million tons (refer table).
Though India, being a developing country has a very strong base to enhance its production of writing and printing papers because of
• Rising literacy rate.
• Increase in the government spending on the education every year.
• Enhancement in standard of living.
• Growing demand for high quality magazines.
• Increase in advertising and in multi color printing, etc.
The impact of global economic recession on the industry in the country is almost negligible; still it would be better to carefully plan the investment, production and marketing to ensure that the effect of overall recession may not put the industry in problems at all. Some of the major constraints and challenges, as given below, before the industry are to be kept in mind in advance
• Environmental considerations.
• Power supply and high energy consumption cost.
• Availability of fibrous raw-materials.
• Scarcity of technically qualified persons in the field of pulp & paper engineering & technology.
• Poor indigenous system of collection, segregation, distribution & utilization of waste paper.
Writing & Printing Paper Capacity being added since 2008 or to be added by 2012
