PAK GROUP celebrates 5-year presence

As the PAK Group's presence in Greece, through its 100% share interest in Macedonian Paper Mills (MEL), reaches its five-year milestone, it is seeing the only Greek cartonboard manufacturer complete the five-year, €20 million investment plan MEL management originally formulated and PAK approved.

The plan’s key targets initially were:

- To improve the company’s environmental footprint with the construction, installation and operation of a biological water treatment plant with a 17,000 m3 capacity, at a cost of about €2 million.

- To drastically reduce the cost of producing thermal energy by installing a steam generation facility using biomass, with a capacity of 20 MW and a budget of €2.5 million.

- To improve final-product packaging with the purchase of a state-of-the-art MSK packaging line budgeted at €1.2 million; and a number of other interventions over the period 2013-2016 totalling approximately €4 million.

The company’s progress during this period and the results of investments over the four years empowered MEL at a general meeting at the Group’s main offices in Istanbul in September 2016 to pursue and secure the shareholder’s consent for the prompt completion of the investment plan. This called for a disbursement of €11.6 million to be used to modernise the major portion of the cardboard production line aimed at improving quality and primarily at increasing the plant’s production capacity by 20%. The increase is expected to add €15 million to the company’s turnover with numerous beneficial implications for its cost structure.