FIVE YEARS ON FROM ITS TISSUE START-UP AFRICAINE PAPER

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MILLS IS ENJOYING “A NEW OXYGEN” FOR ITS PRODUCTS

Algeria is attracting a lot of trade because of its low costs base. After having to turn away orders due to mill capacity, General Manager Belkacem Becharef is determined to gear up production. He spoke to TWM Senior Editor Helen Morris.

With a warm invitation to visit the company’s plant in the very near future, and a thanks for “putting Algeria on the world tissue map,”

Africaine Paper Mills (APM) General Manager Belkacem Becharef has been working at the company for only the past year and a half, yet his enthusiasm for his new role is clear.

Speaking across a Teams call from his office at the business’s 50,000m² Rouïba plant, located 22 kilometres in the eastern suburbs of Algiers and within the 2,381,741km² that is the largest land mass in Africa, APM is now a leading manufacturer of tissue paper jumbo rolls across the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. It moved into tissue production in 2019 when it started up its first tissue machine, an Andritz-supplied PrimeLineCOMPACT TM, equipped with the supplier’s latest shoe press technology PrimePress XT Evo. The line has a design speed of 2,100m/min and a width of 2.85m, and now produces 35,000tpy. Product grades of 13.5gm to 40g jumbo rolls include white or coloured tissue paper that is then cut and packed in converting factories for toilet, facial, industrial, kitchen and pocket tissues, napkin, towel, and diapers. It was the first tissue machine for the now 210-staffed APM, and at the time of its launch, the company said its target was to “produce good paper quality combined with energy-efficiency and be leaders in the MENA tissue market.”

Becharef joined in November 2022, having previously studied paper engineering, working in Algeria for 15 years and latterly Kuwait for 20 years: “APM is made by three families, one from Algeria, one from Syria, and another from Saudi Arabia,” he says. “We started it because in Algeria there’s fewer factories for tissue than is needed, so we saw an opportunity there. Some 30 years ago, there were five or six paper mills here, and our site made white pulp and brown pulp for writing paper and also for fluting and test liner up until 1980/1990. After many problems, they closed all of the factory. Recently they started to make tissue and we now have three or four plants here. In the next four to five years, we will construct one big factory for test liner and fluting, we have signed with Voith, to go alongside the tissue production. We are seeing a lot of increase in demand for tissue paper products, as well as test liner and fluting.”

Investment in tissue remains key, and in May 2024 the company announced it was to boost its production capacity across the MENA tissue market after investing in a Toscotec-supplied rewinder line to be ... (...)

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