Lenzing opens world's largest lyocell plant in Thailand

The construction of the plant located at Industrial Park 304 in Prachinburi, around 150 kilometres northeast of Bangkok, started in the second half of 2019 and proceeded largely according to plan, despite the challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. The recruiting and onboarding of new employees has been successful. Investments (CAPEX) amounted to approximately €400 million, the Austria-headquartered company said.

“We are very proud of this achievement. Our sincere thanks go to the entire Lenzing team and especially to our staff in Thailand but also to many external stakeholders, who joined forces in times of a global pandemic to make this key project reality. To deliver such a huge project in time and at budget is an outstanding achievement given the challenges of the global pandemic, Cord Prinzhorn, CEO of Lenzing Group, said in a press release.

Robert van de Kerkhof, Member of the Managing Board, agreed with him and added: “The demand for our wood-based, biodegradable specialty fibres under the TENCEL, LENZING ECOVERO and VEOCEL brands is growing very well. In Asia in particular, we see huge growth potential for our brands based on sustainable innovation. With the production start of the lyocell plant in Thailand, Lenzing reached an important milestone in its growth journey, supporting our ambitious goal to make the textile and nonwoven industries more sustainable.”

The fashion industry has an extremely negative impact on the environment with its fast fashion business model and the growing consumption of fossil resources. In this scenario, the lyocell production process is the most modern method for producing fibres from wood. It has been successfully applied on an industrial scale for about 30 years and is particularly environmentally responsible. The underlying idea of the lyocell process is to dissolve and process the pulp in a closed loop without any chemical derivatisation, according to Lenzing.

Lenzing will continue to expand its production capacity for lyocell fibres in line with its sCore TEN strategy, which aims to generate 75 per cent of its fibre revenue from eco-responsible specialty fibres such as TENCEL, LENZING ECOVERO and VEOCEL fibres by 2024. The Thailand site offers space for several production lines. The investment in the first phase already includes general infrastructure that would benefit future expansion. However, Lenzing will continue to look for opportunities to expand lyocell production in other parts of the world too, the release added.

“Investments in Thailand and other Lenzing sites around the world support us not only along our transformation towards becoming a supplier of eco-friendly specialty fibres but also in implementing our ambitious climate targets, thus further increasing our company value,” said Prinzhorn.

In 2019, Lenzing made a strategic commitment to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions per ton of product by 50 per cent by 2030. The target is to be climate-neutral by 2050. Due to the established infrastructure, the site in Thailand can be supplied with sustainable biogenic energy and contribute significantly to climate protection.

Together with the key project in Brazil and the substantial investments at the existing sites in Asia, Lenzing is currently implementing the largest investment programme in its corporate history (with more than approximately €1.5 billion). Lenzing will continue to drive the execution of its strategic projects, which are to make a significant contribution to earnings from 2022.

Lenzing’s Robert van de Kerkhof spoke to Fibre2Fashion today. Click here to read the entire interview.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RKS)