Balakhna Pulp and Paper Mill

(full name, F. E. Dzerzhinskii Balakhna Pulp and Paper Combine), one of the largest paper and pulp enterprises in the USSR. It is located in the settlement of Pravdinsk, Gorky Oblast, RSFSR.

The Balakhna Pulp and Paper Mill manufactures newsprint and salvages the waste from its production to make wrapping paper, insulating plates, industrial alcohol, foundry binders, synthetic tanning agents, and fodder yeasts. Construction work on the combine began in 1926. The first paper machine started service in 1928. The second and third machines, designed to produce newsprint sheets in widths of 5.6 m, and the fourth machine, designed to produce wrapping paper, began production before 1933, and the fifth paper machine went into service in 1954. Modernization of the combine was initiated in 1960. A complex of high-speed paper machines (No. 6 and 7), rated at 750 m/min and with a paper sheet width of 6.72 m, went into production from 1962 to 1967.

The combine includes a roadstead and a lumber exchange, two papermaking departments, one pulp mill, two wood pulp mills, a sulfite pulp and alcohol mill with an evaporator facility, yeast shops with a tanning agent division, a waste salvage and utilization department with an insulator plate division and other divisions. Lumber is floated in or shipped by rail. The mills produce pulp for the paper machines. Paper production in 1967 totaled 357,000 tons, as compared to 192,000 tons in 1957.