Metso Paper and the Turkish board manufacturer Modern Karton Sanayi Ticaret AS have signed a Letter of Intent for the delivery of a board making line to the customer's mill in Corlu, appr. 180 km west of Istanbul. The value of the agreement is around EUR 80 million. The deal is subject to the parties coming to the final agreement about the technical details of the project within 2 months.
The Letter of Intent covers a complete board making line including water management system, OCC line, the board machine and the winder. The annual capacity of the line, using 100 per cent recycled raw-material, will be 400,000 tons of containerboard grades. Additionally, a rebuild of an existing board machine is included in the agreement. The machinery will be started up in early 2007.
The agreement is a result of Metso Paper's intensive focusing on the development of new, cost-efficient board making technology.
Modern Karton Sanayi Ticaret AS is a privately owned enterprise and the biggest container board manufacturer in Turkey. After the completion of the new line, the company will rank among the top-10 board producers in Europe. During the recent years, Turkey has experienced a substantial growth in the demand for packaging boards, the figure for last year being as high as 16 per cent.
Metso is a global technology corporation serving customers in the pulp and paper industry, rock and minerals processing, the energy industry and selected other industries. In 2004, the net sales of Metso Corporation were approx. EUR 4 billion, and it has some 23,000 employees in more than 50 countries. Metso's shares are listed on the Helsinki and New York Stock Exchanges.