UK managing director Jeremy Martin said the spend improved quality and consistency, of heavier weights of its R4 triple-coated woodfree paper range.

It spent 80% of investment on the installation of an off-machine, four-headed coater, specifically for triple blade coating.

The investment at Chieti was designed to raise the quality of its R4 paper, used for the production of art catalogues, magazine and book covers, magazines and direct mail material.

Other improvements were pulp preparation, the paper machine, calendar and reeler. On the paper machine, the inflow box, feed table and offset press were all upgraded.

The Chieti mill has a production capacity of 145,000 tonnes per year.

Burgo's merger with the Marchi Group, announced last December, will be ratified on 23 April. The group will have 15 manufacturing facilities with total a production capacity of 3m tonnes of paper per year and annual sales of 1.3bn.