SAO PAULO, 24 May 2022 (PPI Latin America) - Chilean group Empresas Coipsa acquired the assets of BO Paper’s former newsprint plant in Chile and converted it to manufacture containerboard, Fastmarkets has learned.

With the acquisition, Coipsa created a new company called Unipapel, which uses recovered paper and mechanical pulp to produce lightweight containerboard, targeting the corrugated and packaging industry not only in Chile but in other Latin American countries as well.

Coipsa expects to produce 200,000 tonnes of containerboard per year. Unipapel has a production capacity of 120,000 tonnes; and the remaining 80,000 tonnes are produced by Compañía Papelera Pacífico (CPP), another subsidiary of Coipsa.

CPP and Unipapel’s sales director Ignacio Ramirez stated that the mill has been producing high-quality containerboard with a mix of double-lined kraft corrugated cuttings (DLK) and mechanical pulp since September 2021.

“With this acquisition, we have enhanced our capacity to serve the Latin American market with the reliability and speed our customers need, especially in lightweight containerboard, so they can become more competitive and offer better solutions to their customers,” he said.

Empresas Coipsa is a Chilean group of industrial companies with more than 50 years of experience manufacturing containerboard and packaging systems.

Through its seven companies, the group develops solutions through a circular economy model. Its processes include industrial waste management and recovery, paper production from recycled sources, energy generation using biomass, container and packaging solutions with corrugated paper, and the development of robotic systems to automate end-of-line production processes.

BO Paper. Latin America's leading producer of newsprint, Chilean group BO Paper, announced the permanent closure of its Concepción mill, located in the Bío Bío region in Chile, in January 2021.

In Brazil, BO Paper still owns two paper mills that produce lightweight coated (LWC) and newsprint.

In recent years, both facilities have received investments to improve product mix, with the company starting to offer coated woodfree (CWF) and containerboard to its Brazilian customers.

From Fastmarkets RISI