Sappi and Bor­regaard cel­eb­rate 20 years of biore­finery investment

Gary Bowles, Group Head Tech­no­logy of Sappi Lim­ited com­men­ted on the anniversary: ​“Lig­noTech has been a tre­mend­ous suc­cess. Sappi and Bor­regaard showed faith and com­mit­ment 20 years ago and have cre­ated a syn­er­gist­ic integ­ra­tion of loc­al com­pet­en­cies, infra­struc­ture and raw mater­i­al with inter­na­tion­ally-proven tech­no­logy and glob­al reach. This innov­at­ive ven­ture con­tin­ues to bene­fit all stake­hold­ers. Lig­noTech is an example of Sappi’s com­mit­ment to work with part­ners to devel­op solu­tions, in par­tic­u­lar in the excit­ing fields of bio­chem­ic­als and bio­ma­ter­i­als.” Per A. Sørlie, CEO of Bor­regaard com­men­ted: ​“Bor­regaard is a proud co-own­er of Lig­noTech. The part­ner­ship pro­duces high value-added products from a loc­al raw mater­i­al, cre­ates more than 100 jobs, gen­er­ates export rev­en­ues for South Africa and has a pos­it­ive impact on the envir­on­ment.” The loc­a­tion in South Africa was chosen because of the ready avail­ab­il­ity of a sus­tain­able sup­ply of raw mater­i­als, effect­ive infra­struc­ture, highly com­pet­ent people, the rel­at­ively low cost of pro­duc­tion and prox­im­ity to export mar­kets via the Port of Durb­an. The suc­cess of the ven­ture can be seen in the expan­sions under­taken dur­ing the 20 years. The plant was expan­ded three times since incep­tion, in 2003, 2008 and in 2017. Through­out the plant’s exist­ence small and medi­um sup­pli­ers have benefited as con­tract­ors and sub-con­tract­ors. Thou­sands of tem­por­ary jobs were cre­ated through the expan­sion pro­jects. Mark Ant­onie, Lig­noTech South Africa GM com­men­ted: ​“We are very proud that the busi­ness has grown from the ini­tial 55kt p.a. plant and has matured into one of the largest lignosulph­on­ate man­u­fac­tur­ers glob­ally pro­du­cing high qual­ity products. Lig­noTech South Africa’s out­put is sold in South Africa and expor­ted to coun­tries in Africa, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and South Amer­ica and is used in a range of applic­a­tions includ­ing dust sup­pres­sion, con­crete addit­ives, pel­let­ing agents in anim­al feeds and min­er­al gran­u­la­tion aids to name a few.” Source: Sappi Lim­ited, Press release, 08.04.2019