Andhra Paper is fundamentally a tree-to-notebook business - it grows the wood, cooks the pulp, and rolls the paper under one roof. The company began as a small mill on the banks of the Godavari River in the 1920s, passed through government hands, and was later run by an American giant before landing in 2019 with the Bangur Group, a family with six decades in Indian paper. Everything it does follows a single recurring logic: own the raw material, run the machines at world-class efficiency, and sell every sheet through a dealer network that has barely changed in a generation. # Business segments A single integrated engine - growing trees, making pulp, and manufacturing uncoated paper - where every stage feeds the next and the whole operation stands on secure, self-grown wood fibre. ## 1. Uncoated writing, printing and copier paper: the company’s sole business **Andhra Paper makes the sheets that become school notebooks, office reams and wedding invitations - one integrated process from sapling to finished cut-size, with no middlemen between the tree and the truck.** - **Grows its own raw material** - the company runs a farm forestry programme across roughly 718,000 acres within a 150-kilometre radius of its mills, distributing high-yielding Casuarina, Eucalyptus and Subabul saplings to farmers. - **Cooks virgin pulp on site** - at its Rajahmundry unit, wood chips are turned into 200,000 tonnes of bleached pulp each year using an Elemental Chlorine Free process, which means the pulp is whitened with oxygen and peroxide rather than harsh chlorine. - **Burns its own waste for power** - the chemical recovery boiler runs entirely on black liquor, a lignin-rich by-product of pulping, meeting 65% of the Rajahmundry unit’s power needs and cutting the coal bill. - **Runs two mills with distinct fibre diets** - the Rajahmundry mill makes 182,400 tonnes of paper a year from virgin fibre, while the 300-acre Kadiyam mill adds another 73,150 tonnes using recycled wastepaper and purchased pulp, giving the company a combined paper capacity of 255,550 tonnes annually. - **Sells through a loyal dealer network** - 53 dealers across 21 states move the paper to printers, notebook converters and offices, and three-quarters of those dealers have been with the company for more than 15 years. # Group structure and partners **Andhra Paper is the listed subsidiary of West Coast Paper Mills, a fellow Bangur Group company that bought control from International Paper in 2019 and now holds 72.45% of the shares.** - **Parent with overlapping know-how** - West Coast Paper Mills, based in Karnataka, has been making printing, writing and packaging paper since 1955, and already operates in the paperboard segment that Andhra Paper can draw on. - **The American chapter** - International Paper of the US owned a 75% stake from 2010 and ran the company under the International Paper APPM name until it sold out to West Coast Paper Mills in 2019; the remaining International Paper entities exited completely and were reclassified as public shareholders by mid-2021. - **Bangur family at the helm** - the Chairman, Shree Kumar Bangur, also leads West Coast Paper Mills as Chairman and Managing Director, while Saurabh Bangur serves as Managing Director of Andhra Paper and is personally driving the tissue-paper diversification project.