Lenzing to invest in its capacity expansion for Specialty Fibers

The Lenzing Group to make investment of about Euro 70 millon in Heiligenkreuz and Euro 30 million at the Lenzing site to expand its capacities for specialty fibers by 35,000 tons by mid 2018, Strategic importance of the manufacturing facility in Heiligenkreuz, Burgenland for TENCEL premium fibers is underpinned.

They will invest more than Euro 100 million over the next 20 months to expand production capacities for their high-quality botanic fibers, 70% at the Heiligenkreuz site and 30% at Lenzing, said Lenzing’s CEO Stefan Doboczky. Given the strong market demand this expansion will help their customers in their growth plans as well as expanding their global market leadership position for speciality fibers.

As part of its new group strategy sCore TEN, Lenzing set the target of increasing the share of specialty fibers as a proportion of its total revenue to 50% by the year 2020. Specialty fibers currently account for 41.7% of revenue. The planned capacity expansion of 35,000 tons of specialty fibers at the sites in Heiligenkreuz and Lenzing, as well as at the site in Grimsby, Great Britain, is the first step of the announced speciality fiber expansion program of Lenzing AG. Customers will be able to take advantage of some 10,000 tons of specialty fiber capacity already by the end of this year.

The investment in Heiligenkreuz will create 25 new jobs. Lenzing AG decided to start its investment program for speciality fibers at its existing sites in Austria and the UK as it allows fast capacity ramp up. The strategic role of the Heiligenkreuz site as a key location of new types of TENCEL premium fibers developed by researchers and application engineers in Lenzing in cooperation with customers is strongly underpinned.

The major part of investments will be carried out in the years 2016 and 2017. The Lenzing Group will fully utilize its in house engineering competence, supported by local construction companies and suppliers for these projects.