Lenzing Plans Upper Austria's Largest Ground-Mounted Photovoltaic Solar Power Plant

Image Courtesy of Lenzing Group

Lenzing – The Lenzing Group plans Upper Austria’s largest ground-mounted photovoltaic plant on an area of around 55,000 m².

The groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled to take place in summer 2021.

After the expected commissioning in the second half of 2021, the plant's output will amount to 5.5 MWpeak.

With approximately 16,000 modules, the plant will generate nearly 5,500 megawatt hours per year.

This corresponds to the average annual electricity demand of more than 1,700 households and is unique in Upper Austria on this scale.

The photovoltaic plant is an important symbolic milestone for Lenzing on its way to becoming a CO2-neutral industrial site.

This project is part of Lenzing’s global energy concept, which aims to provide electricity from 100 percent renewable sources in order to reduce CO2 intensity by 50 percent already in 2030 and to be globally climate neutral in 2050.

"The great challenges of our time need answers. As a leading company in innovation and sustainability, we are proactively contributing to the achievement of climate targets and setting new standards for our industry," explains Stefan Doboczky, CEO of the Lenzing Group. “In addition to ongoing major investments in CO2 neutral sites such as Thailand and Brazil, innovative projects at existing sites are bringing us one step closer to climate neutrality.”

Lenzing Rushes From Success To Success – With Certain Downward Developments In Between.

Start Of Expansion For Lyocell Fiber Capacities.

Lenzing is encouraged by the great demand of the market and focuses on dynamic growth in the beginning of the new decade.

While the viscose production site Nanjing opened another production line in 2011, Lenzing began building the first Lyocell fiber plant in Lenzing itself and successfully started operations two years later.

The pulp production was further expanded both in Lenzing and Paskov, the latter also becoming largely energy self-sufficient and introducing an eco-friendly, chlorine-free bleaching process.

The fifth production line of the Indonesian subsidiary SPV went into operation in 2012, making it one of the largest viscose fiber plants in the world.     

In 2015 Lenzing presented the new corporate strategy sCore TEN, which also included the expansion of capacities for the production of specialty fibers and the increase in Lenzing’s self-supply with pulp.

In line with this new strategic direction, important investment decisions were made in 2019 after several years of planning and preparation: the decision to build the first lyocell fiber plant in Asia, specifically in Thailand, and the decision to build dissolving wood pulp plant in Brazil.    

In the course of these years, Lenzing created one sensation after the other with forward-looking innovations and a series of cooperation agreements with partners along the value chain:

In 2012 Lenzing presented Modal Color, a modal fiber with significant ecological advantages in the dyeing process and without losing its color intensity even after repeated washes. In the field of sanitary applications, Lenzing developed a special version of the Lyocell fiber that enabled the ecologically sound disposal of wet wipes in the toilet.

The new fibers dissolved in sewage treatment plants despite their otherwise firm structure.    

When it commercially launched the REFIBRA™ technology in 2017, Lenzing achieved an unprecedented milestone for the circular economy in textiles.

TENCEL™ x REFIBRA™ branded lyocell fibers are the first cellulosic fibers that wood as well as scraps left over from the production of cotton clothing as the base material are used for.

In 2019, Lenzing achieved another breakthrough in the development of post-consumer textiles as a raw material for the production of TENCEL™ x REFIBRA™ fibers.

After years of research and development, Lenzing launched its first filament yarn, TENCEL™ Luxe, in 2017.

With its production based on the environmentally friendly Lyocell technology, the new filament is used in sustainable high-end cellulose textiles in the fashion industry.