Chilean group BO Paper will shut down its Bio Bio newsprint mill close to the city of Concepcion. The group blames its decision on the ongoing demand reduction on the market for publication paper, accelerated by the current coronavirus pandemic.
In 2019, the BO Paper Bio Bio mill reportedly produced a total of 95,000 tpy. Output in 2020 reached only 45,000 tpy, severely impacting the mill’s performance, the group explained.
According to the company’s website, the Bio Bio mill has a total capacity of 125,000 tpy of publication paper. BO Paper group said it was looking to mitigate the impact of demand reduction by diversifying production to include specialty papers and high-yield thermo-mechanical pulp for packaging board applications, but those efforts did not yield the expected results. BO Paper runs two more paper mills in Brazil, i.e. BO Paper Pisa and BO Paper Arapoti, producing newsprint, LWC, flexible packaging and label paper, and is also supplying CTMP and BCTMP to the market.