21 Feb. 2023: The dramatic earthquakes in Turkey that shook the country on February 6 and claimed tens of thousands of victims will also have an impact on the Turkish paper industry.
For example, Kahramanmaras, the epicenter of the quakes, is home to one paper mill each of the companies Kipas Kagit and KMK Paper. Both mills are now at a standstill.
Kipas Kagit produces waste paper-based board base papers at its mill in Kahramanmaras with a capacity of about 450,000 t/y. KMK Paper's Kahramanmaras mill produces recovered paper-based corrugating medium, gray board and core board with a capacity of 150,000 tpy.
https://www.paper-world.com
22 Feb. 2023: The dramatic earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria on 6 February and claimed tens of thousands of victims is also having an impact on the Turkish paper industry. In Kahramanmaras, the epicentre of these earthquakes, Kipas Kagit and KMK Paper do each operate one paper mill. Both sites are now standing still.
Other paper mills in the region are likely to be affected as well, although there is no information available on them yet. For example, Essel Kagit runs a tissue mill in Osmaniye and Ankutsan’s containerboard mill, which also planned to add a new PM this year, is loacted in Adana, where several other paper mills are located as well.
23 Feb. 2023: The fallout from the tragic earthquake that struck Turkey on February 6 is still being determined, and so is the damage to the country’s paper sector. The human toll of the quake, which registered 7.8 on the Richter scale, has been immense, with the number of victims topping 40,000. The damage to the paper industry in the Kahramanmaraş region surrounding the quake’s epicenter in the south of the country remains to be fully quantified, but it appears to have been significant, and some mills have had to stop production.
One of those was Essel Kagit’s Osmaniye tissue mill. The firm said shortly after the quake that while the tissue PM was not damaged nor was there any serious damage to the mill itself, the decision was made to halt production out of consideration for the mill’s workers and the scale of the human suffering. According to market sources, after being down for approximately one week, the Osmaniye mill is now up and running again. The mill can produce some 31,000 tonnes/yr of tissue.