Toronto, Ontario, September 28, 2006--Sino-Forest Corporation, a leading commercial forestry plantation operator in China, today announced the opening of its engineered wood flooring manufacturing facility in Suzhou, China. Approximately 60 km from Shanghai, Suzhou is a rapidly expanding economic and industrial zone located along the Yangtze River Delta.
The state-of-the-art facility occupies 22 hectares of land including a covered area measuring 35,000 m2, and is expected to have an annual production capacity of 8 million m2. Built in two phases, phase one of the project has been completed and is in full commercial operation with an annual capacity of 4 million m2. Completion of the second phase is expected to be in 2007 which would increase the production capacity to 8 million m2 when completed.
The engineered wood flooring is marketed under the Sino-Maple brand and is distributed through more than 200 outlets nationwide, including B&Q's mega do it yourself chain stores. Sino-Maple has also participated in numerous international exhibitions promoting its wood flooring products, which are fast becoming a popular substitute for solid and laminated flooring in China due to its environmentally conscious use of forest plantation logs over large diameter natural forest logs.
In addition, this facility recently received accreditation from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC certification) for its flooring products.
With the rise in China's economic development, and the high demand in
residential renovation projects throughout China, Sino-Forest estimates annual revenue of approximately US$130 million when the facility is completed and operating at full capacity of 8 million m2 of production.
"This new facility positions Sino-Forest to better serve our customers with our own products versus the OEM process. Moreover, we are excited to promote the use of small diameter plantation logs," said Mr. Allen Chan,chairman and CEO of Sino-Forest who officiated the opening ceremony with
the presence of Mr. Wang Jinhua, Vice-Secretary of Suzhou Municipal People's Government & Secretary of Suzhou Industrial Park Working Committee.
Sino-Forest is the leading, foreign-owned, commercial forestry plantation operator in China in terms of plantation area. The corporation cultivates trees for sale as standing timber and wood chips, and is
involved in the trading and manufacturing of wood chips, logs and engineered wood products for the pulp & paper, furniture, construction and decoration industries. Sino-Forest is a Canadian corporation with executive offices in Hong Kong and operations in southern China. It operates mainly through three wholly-owned subsidiaries - Sino-Wood Partners Limited,
Sino-Panel Holdings Limited and Sino-Global Holdings Inc. The Corporation's common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol TRE since 1995.
