The new shed taking shape on port land at Cross Road marks a new step in one of the Port of Tauranga's original trades.

The 22,000m2 shed is being built for Oji Fibre Solutions, and will be used to store paper from Kinleith for export.

Oji Fibre Solutions new shed will be completed in February.

Completion date is February 2017, says Port of Tauranga property & infrastructure manager, Dan Kneebone.

'This purpose built shed will provide Oji Fibre Solutions with greater flexibility around product storage, handling, packaging and dispatching.”

The pulp and paper trade was one of the original core trades that saw the development of the Mount Maunganui wharf during the later decades of the twentieth Century.

At one stage, there were dedicated side loading pulp and paper ships the Tasman Venture and Tasman Enterprise exporting the newsprint to Tasmania and Australia.

They were sold as the demand for newsprint declined around the turn of the century.

The Tokyo-based Oji Group is the fifth largest pulp and paper company in the world, with 158 consolidated subsidiaries located in 17 countries worldwide.

The Oji Group owns both the Kinleith pulp and paper mill, and the Tasman Mill at Kawerau. Kinleith produces more than 600,000 tonnes per annum of packaging papers and bleached softwood kraft market pulp. The Tasman mill has a capacity of about 300,000 tonnes of bleached and unbleached kraft market pulp used by manufacturers of high quality paper, tissue and building products.

Most Oji Group pulp is exported to markets in Asia for use in the manufacture of printing and writing paper, boards and tissue.