It will increase from 80kt to 100kt/y, amounting to 5.3% of the world’s total foil production excluding China.
It will also review its production portfolio, to focus on converter foil. Total investment in the project will amount to about $17M.
The production increase will be achieved by modernising the three largest CIS foil and foil packaging plants: Sayanal, Ural Foil and Armenal.
Ural Foil’s production capacity will increase from 16kt to 24kt/y, costing $7M. Armenal’s production capacity will rise from 26kt to 33.6kt/y, costing $6M.
Sayanal’s capacity will increase from 38kt to 42kt/y costing $4M.
This decision was made after analysing global packaging market trends. Current world market capacity (excluding China), according to Rusal’s, is 800kt/y.
Approximately 60% is accounted for by converter foil, 15% by household foil, 14-15% by container foil (used for food packaging, cooking and in-flight catering) and 10% by technical foil.
The extra volumes will be sold in Russia, Europe and USA in the converter foil segment. Converter foil combined with paper, film, lacquer or embossment, depending on its purpose, is widely used in packaging production for FMCG goods.