The shareholders of Kelheim Fibres GmbH have approved the first stage of a new, 4-stage investment package. This was announced by the C.E.O. of Kelheim Fibres GmbH, Dr. Haio Harms, during festivities to mark the 75th anniversary of the fibre manufacturer.

At the festivities, staged under the motto “75 years – a bridge from yesterday to tomorrow,“ which were intended to focus particularly on the future development of the Kelheim fibre-producing location, amongst other issues, Harms emphasized those positive signals seen on the site in the past few years: the willingness to invest in new processes, in innovation and new products, had made it possible to continue to expand the company’s technological edge and to strengthen its market position.

He confirmed that more than 100 million Euros had already been invested in the location between 2004 and 2009.

In the first stage of the so-called UEK Programme („Umweltverbesserung (environmental improvement), effizienz-steigernde Erneuerung (efficiency-enhancing renewal) and Realisieren von Kapazitätsreserven“ (realization of capacity reserves) an investment volume of around 25 million Euros are to be spent on refurbishing an existing spinning line with state-of-the-art technologies. This will allow removal of the majority of process exhaust air directly at source.

An additional environmental measure includes investing in a new, combined evaporation and calcination plant, which will cut consumption of steam currently needed in this area by 75%.

At the same time, these improvements also eliminate certain bottlenecks in production, enabling an increase in production capacity at Kelheim Fibres as of the second quarter of 2012 to an annual fibre capacity of 91,000 tons.

In the following years, three further stages “UEK 2 to 4“ – each involviing an investment of around 25 million Euros – are planned for modernisation of the remaining spinning lines, thus enabling a capacity of around122,000 tons/annum to be reached.

This increase in production volume will enable Kelheim Fibres to alleviate the competitive disadvantage resulting from producing in Germany with the increased infrastructure costs this entails (such as energy, safety, incidental wage costs, environment, administration, etc.) via higher quantities – to maintain the competitive edge of Kelheim’s Fibres in an international environment.