Displaying items by tag: Marubeni

Marubeni Power Development Australia Pty Ltd. has chosen Metso to upgrade the automation system at its Smithfield Energy Facility in Smithfield, New South Wales, Australia. The company chose Metso to supply the upgrade thanks to Metso's professional and reliable service capabilities, long cooperation as well as existing system compatibility and upgradability. For example, the existing I/O modules can be fully reused.

Operated by Marubeni Australia Power Services Ltd, the 162 MW Smithfield cogeneration plant produces electricity for the national grid and process steam for an adjacent cardboard recycling plant. The plant is fueled by natural gas. 

Metso supplied the plant's existing control system in 1996-97. It has now come to the end of its life cycle and needs to be upgraded. The refurbished control system will be commissioned in June-August 2013. 

Marubeni Australia Power Services Ltd. is a subsidiary of Marubeni, which is involved in the handling of products and provision of services in a broad range of sectors. These areas encompass importing and exporting, as well as transactions in the Japanese market, related to food materials, food products, textiles, materials, pulp and paper, chemicals, energy, metals and mineral resources, transportation machinery, and offshore trading. The company's activities also extend to power projects and infrastructure, plants and industrial machinery, finance, logistics and information industry, and real estate development and construction. www.marubeni.com

The Japanese firm Marubeni is gearing up to build a 1.2 million tonne/yr pulp mill in the Krasnoyarsk area of Russia, following negotiations between the Japanese trading firm and the greenfield plant's Russian owner, Angara Paper.

A contract for Marubeni to build the pulp facility was signed after a trade and economic relations meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Japanese prime minister Yoshihiko Noda at the 2012 APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) conference in Vladivostok, Russia, on September 8.

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A Marubeni contact said that under the equipment, procurement and construction agreement between the two firms, Marubeni will be the turnkey contractor for the $3.5 billion pulp mill.

He indicated that the plant will house a 900,000 tonne/yr bleached softwood kraft pulp line, the world's largest of its kind, and a 300,000 tonne/yr textile dissolving pulp line.

The facility is to be located in Lesosibirsk, a town in Krasnoyarsk krai, eastern Russia, on the Yenisei River.

Construction work at the site is slated to begin early next year, with startup scheduled for 2017, he added.

In April last year, Södra signed a letter of intent with Angara Paper to become the latter's distributor of pulp sales, if the project went ahead.

According to sister publication PPI Europe, under the letter's terms, the Swedish firm could hold up a 10% stake in the company or be paid in cash for its distribution services.

However, a final contract has not been inked between the two companies. And Marubeni is a possible candidate to be an agent for selling the pulp mill's output when it comes on stream.

According to the Japanese news agency Nikkei, around 80% of the new pulp plant's output is to be sold in Japan, China and elsewhere in Asia.

The Japanese firm is a trading powerhouse selling woodchips, market pulp, recovered paper, paper and board on the global market, with its business focusing on fast-growing Asian sectors for the past several years.

The company has also developed managed plantations that total 390,000 ha in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China and Indonesia.

In the mid-stream and downstream forestry industry, it owns majority stakes in two pulp producers, one based in Canada and the other in Indonesia, and in several paper and board firms in Japan. It also has minority shares in two recycled containerboard manufacturers (the Malaysian firm GS Paper & Packaging and the Taiwan-based Long Cheng Paper (China) Holdings and in several Japanese firms.

PT TEL pulp plans: Currently, Marubeni sells market pulp manufactured at the 475,000 tonne/yr Peach River pulp mill in Alberta, Canada, operated by its subsidiary Daishowa-Marubeni International, and the output from another subsidiary, PT Tanjung Enim's (PT TEL) 450,000 tonne/yr bleached acacia kraft pulp in South Sumatra, Indonesia.

Earlier this month, the Indonesian media reported that PT TEL planned to erect a new 500,000 tonne/yr pulp line at the facility. The Marubeni source denied the report, saying it has no plans for expansion there at present.

He said that the plant is planning a 5-10 annual maintenance downtime in October, but further details, such as the exact dates for the shut, have not yet been hammered out.