Gondi’s new PM7 in Monterrey reaches designed speed ahead of schedule

Grupo Gondi’s new paper machine (PM) No7 in Monterrey, Mexico, is already producing at its designed capacity of 1,100 tonnes per day, the company’s chief executive officer Eduardo Posada confirmed to Fastmarkets.

“We have been working at this speed for about a month and a half, completing the learning curve ahead of what we have planned, which was to reach this speed by the end of 2022,” the executive said.

The accelerated ramp-up was possible thanks to a lot of work and efforts from the company’s technical teams, which are also constantly striving to reduce production costs, according to Posada.

“To control costs in all our operations is a very important goal for production this year due to the inflation we are facing with inputs, chemicals, energy and transport. It is a key challenge that we are focused to address in 2022,” he said.

The new 400,000-tonne-per-year lightweight linerboard and medium PM started up on January 5, 2021, and was part of Gondi’s plans to increase integration with its box plants, reducing containerboard imports from the United States.

In 2021, Gondi produced about 800,000 tonnes of paper; and that number that should be higher in 2022, with the Monterrey PM running at full capacity for at least six months.

Posada believes that Grupo Gondi will be we able to sell about 250,000 tonnes of containerboard paper to the market – including to clients in Mexico and in export markets – this year.

“Demand has been good for our products, and in case box demand from our corrugated packaging plants increases again, we are able to reduce our paper offerings to external clients and integrate more paper. We are very flexible with our portfolio,” Posada said.

In his opinion, sales in Mexico have remained solid in 2022 after a very good year of sales in 2021.

“Demand is now firm but stabilized at a very good level. We have just finished the high season for agriculture sales with good volumes, and by September sales for this market will reactivate again. We estimate Mexican containerboard apparent consumption to grow about 3.4% this year, on top of the very good volume already registered in 2021, a very positive scenario for us,” Posada said.