Johannesburg, South Africa 10 April 2019 -- Sappi stopped production on PM 8 at its Lanaken mill in Belgium as planned on April 1 and started the rebuild of the machine. After the approximately two-month rebuild, PM 8, which was previously designed exclusively for LWC production, will also be able to produce woodfree coated paper in order to respond better to market developments. The capacity of PM 8 is around 300,000 tpy, and the Lanaken mill's two paper machines have a total capacity of 530,000 tpy.

Sappi plans to put PM 8 back into operation in early June, which, according to Sappi, means around 50,000 tons less LWC production. A company representative explained that LWC had been pre-produced and stored so that delivery could continue smoothly. Sappi can also deliver LWC from the Kirkniemi plant in Finland. There Sappi has three paper machines with a total annual capacity of 750,000 for wood-containing coated paper.