“We will invest more than €100 million over the next 20 months to expand production capacity for our high-quality botanic fibers, 70% at the Heiligenkreuz site and 30% at Lenzing,” says Lenzing CEO Stefan Doboczky. “Given the strong market demand this expansion will help our customers in their growth plans as well as expanding our 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 from 41.7%, its current level, to 50% by the year 2020. The planned capacity expansion of 35,000 tons in specialty fibers at the sites in Heiligenkreuz and Lenzing, as well as at the site in Grimsby, U.K., is the first step in the speciality fiber expansion program at Lenzing AG. Customers will have access to about 10,000 tons of specialty fiber capacity by the end of this year.
The major part of investment will be made in the years 2016-2017. The Lenzing Group will fully utilize its in-house engineering competence, supported by local construction companies and suppliers for these projects. The investment in Heiligenkreuz will create 25 new jobs.