CHANDIGARH: With the commissioning of its state-of-the-art integrated pulp and paper project on Wednesday, Abhishek Industries Limited (AIL), the flagship of the Trident Group, claims to have emerged as the world's largest wheat straw-based integrated paper plant. According to a spokesperson of the company, the new project, set up with an investment of Rs.825 crore, includes an additional paper machine with an installed capacity of 1.25 lakh tonnes per annum (tpa).

T E Narasimhan State-owned Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Ltd (TNPL) is planning to invest Rs 1,000 crore to expand its paper making capacity to four lakh tonnes a year from current 2.45 lakh tonnes. NPL also considering diversifying into cement manufacturing business, using waste wet lime sludge generated from its paper making operations and fly ash generated from its power boilers. The company is awaiting the state government's approval for both proposals.

Shares in timber company Gunns fell sharply in intraday trading today, following reports that the ANZ bank would pull out of funding Gunns' controversial $2 billion pulp mill project in Tasmania. At 12.51pm, Gunns was down 18 cents, or 5.61%, at $3.03, having touched a low for the day of $3.01. "There's a bit of uncertainty over the funding of the mill,'' CMC Markets head of trading James Foulsham said. "But there still hasn't been big volumes going through. "So I don't think it's any wholesale dumping by any of the institutional investors or anything like that.''

A paper and pulp mill, operating in southern Chile, has pitted a group of fisherfolk against its neighbours and is trying to get away by installing a controversial pipeline to dump waste water from

Hindustan Paper Corporation Limited, the third largest entity in the Indian Paper Industry operating with three large integrated paper mills each with installed capacity of 1,00,000 ton paper per annum. Two are directly managed Units in Asom