Ilim switching to making products under its own brand after International Paper's exit

IRKUTSK. Jan 17 (Interfax) - Ilim Group plans to produce 95,000 tonnes of office paper under its own brand in 2024, the Russian forestry group told Interfax.

"The group's mill in Koryazhma now annually produces about 350,000 tonnes of white paper, of which it plans to produce 95,000 tonnes of office paper under the Ilim brand in 2024," a company spokesman said.

He said that at the end of 2023 the group stopped making office paper under the brands it produced within the context of a joint marketing agreement with International Paper.

"The marketing agreement expired. Therefore, the decision to produce white office paper under our own brand is logical," the spokesman said.

Ilim said in a press release that bleaching of pulp for white paper production at the company no longer depends on imports. "Before we purchased chemical reagents in Scandinavia, [but] now the group's branch in Koryazhma has mastered the technology to make them," the company said.

Ilim said that it installed a paper machine with capacity to produce over 200,000 tonnes per year in 2013 as part of an investment project at the Koryazhma mill that cost 9 billion rubles.

U.S. company International Paper in 2023 completed the sale of 50% of shares in Swiss holding company Ilim SA, which owns the largest pulp and paper producer in Russia - Ilim Group, to its Russian JV partner - Ilim Global Timber Rus LLC, owned by Zakhar Smushkin and Boris Zingarevich.