paper  appointments 
Finland’s Metso Paper has established a new sales company, Metso Paper India Pvt. Ltd., at Gurgaon near New Delhi, India. With the new company, led by General Manager Manos Mukherjee, Metso Paper is able to offer the Indian pulp and paper industry a full range of products and services from the same source, including new machine lines, rebuilds, process improvements and aftersales service. The company’s areas of business are paper, board and tissue making lines, chemical and mechanical pulping, and service.

The establishment of Metso Paper India demonstrates Metso Paper’s high level of commitment to the emerging Indian market and its willingness to serve Indian customers locally with high-quality technology and expert services.

In 2004, the Indian paper and board industry produced a total of 6.55 million tonnes and the consumption was 7.24 million tonnes. In 2015, both figures are estimated to be in the 13 million tonnes range, giving an average annual growth rate of approximately 6 per cent compared with a global growth rate of 2.2 per cent.

In 2004, the per capita consumption of paper and board in India was 6.7 kg. The main grades produced are printing and writing papers (34 per cent), industrial boards (47 per cent), and newsprint (10 per cent). Paper and board production in the country, with the exception of newsprint, is very fragmented.

The major challenges of the Indian pulp and paper industry are related to the low scale of operation, capacity utilisation, and efficiency of installed machine base, as well as the high cost of transportation, capital, and raw materials. The annual capacity of an average paper machine in India is only 14,000 tonnes.

Metso Paper has supplied paper machine rebuilds, components, and fibre systems to a number of producers all around India since the late 1980s. The new sales office will be located in Gurgaon, near New Delhi, the same premises used by Metso Automation and Metso Minerals.

General manager of Metso Paper India, Manos Mukherjee, aged 55, has worked in the Indian paper industry for the last 35 years. Before joining Metso he was working in Sweden for a trading house dealing with pulp and paper machinery.

Metso is a global technology company serving customers in the pulp and paper industry, rock and minerals processing, energy industry as well as in selected other industries. In 2004, the net sales of Metso Corporation were approximately €4bn. The group has some 23,000 employees in more than 50 countries. Its shares are listed on the Helsinki and New York Stock Exchanges.