Lee & Man Paper Co. has placed an order worth US$54 million for a kraftliner board machine from Metso Paper for their new mill, to be built in Vietnam.

The new 3-ply board machine, with a wire width of 7,250 mm and a design speed of 1,150 m/min, is a single-supplier delivery from Metso Paper. Scheduled to start up in July 2008, the machine will have an annual capacity of 400,000 metric tons.

The delivery also includes machine controls and quality control systems by Metso Automation.

The new mill will be located at a greenfield site 200 km south of Ho Chi Minh City. Once completed, the new mill will serve the fast growing Vietnamese packaging market with high quality linerboard products. In 2005, paper and board consumption totaled 1.3 million tons in Vietnam, and annual consumption per capita was approximately 13 kg.

Lee & Man Paper Manufacturing Co., Ltd. is one of China's largest containerboard producers. The company, founded in 1994 and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, has three containerboard mills with a combined annual production capacity of 2.2 million metric tons.