GAW’s Commitment to a Chinese Customer for over 30 Years and Two Generations

GAW technologies GmbH recently has been awarded by APP China with an important order at one of their key subsidiaries - Jiangsu Bohui Paper Industry Co. Ltd.

GAW, a renowned family-owned company with decades of experience in coating and preparation technology for the production of high-quality paper and board, will deliver the complete coating color kitchen and working stations for the PM4+5.

It is an order of great historic value for the Chinese paper industry: thirty years ago, GAW delivered to APP China’s Ningbo Zhonghua Paper Industry Co. a most advanced coating color kitchen and working stations - at that time for the PM2+3. These paper machines produced coated boards of highest quality (for example card boards, poker cards, cigarette boards, food packaging boards) that are well acknowledged in China and surrounding countries in Asia Pacific. With extensive know-how in coating color preparation, also supported by GAW along with highly sophisticated equipment for coating color dispersion and filtration, APP China grew to become the biggest coated board producer in China, especially after its acquisition of Shandong Bohui Paper Industry Co., Ltd in 2020. GAW had also delivered GCC wet grinding, coating color kitchen, working stations and wet end chemicals preparation systems for three of Shandong Bohui’s biggest coated board machines.

After almost 30 years as the leading producer in the market, the mill has witnessed the fast economic growth of China, and finally had to be shut down and relocated to Jiangsu Bohui’s site because the site had finally been surrounded by all downtown facilities while the city has been expanding dramatically.

GAW will optimize and reuse as much of the existing equipment as possible in the coating color kitchen and working stations, in order to save resources and to keep the investment sum for the customer low. Additionally the existing automationX process control system along with the batch management will be updated into the latest version. A new generation of GAW filtration system and special fast-grade change equipment will be applied in all working stations to the coating heads and filmsizers under the new running speed, to ensure highest flexibility in daily operation.

Interesting fun fact: In 1995 the whole plant at Ningbo Zhonghua Paper was supervised by GAW’s Erich Hirschbeck – at that time senior erection supervisor - who has been working in the company for more than 40 years and will now also lead the project execution team in China to put the new plant on stream in the last quarter of 2025 as planned by customer side.

And his son Daniel Hirschbeck has been the key person for the technical proposal of optimizing/reusing/upgrading all the existing equipment.

It is a really interesting fact that now two generations of GAW employees have been committed to the same customer in China.

April 2025