UK, Jan 23, 2012 - Spanish paper company SAICA has produced the first paper at its new £300 million recycled paper mill in Partington, Greater Manchester.
The company said today (January 23) that the milestone had been reached ahead of schedule following successful trials of the company’s Paper Machine 11 (PM11). Installation of the machine began in early 2011.
The production of sellable paper at Partington marks the return of the paper industry to Trafford, and what SAICA described as the start of a ‘new chapter in British papermaking’.
On Sunday January 15, PM11 successfully produced paper for the first time, with paper running through the whole machine and paper reels being processed along the whole line. Three days later, on January 18, the first sellable paper reels were produced and tested, leaving the mill and reaching the first customers shortly afterwards.
The £300 million state-of-the-art Partington mill - SAICA’s first in the UK and the first ‘new’ containerboard paper mill in the UK for decades - will produce 400,000tpa of 100% recycled containerboard each year.
A spokesman for SAICA told letsrecycle.com that it expected the plant to become fully operational in the next couple of months.
Milestone
Commenting on the success, Francisco Carilla, industrial projects director, said: “We’re obviously delighted to reach this significant milestone – the company’s first reel of sellable recycled paper made in the UK from UK recovered papers. However, this is not the end. We continue to work hard to improve the running of the machine, increase its speed, broaden the range and perfect the paper we produce at Partington.
Federico Asensio, deputy managing director, SAICA PAPER, added: “The cooperation between the project and operations teams on getting PM11 to this stage has been a success. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everybody involved in the project for their professional and personal efforts, especially to those employees we’ve temporarily relocated for training, construction, assembly and start-up purposes.
“Our commitment to our customers means that we will continue to work hard in our state-of-the-art mill to deliver containerboard that sets the standard for performance papers in the UK and Europe.”
Over the last two years, SAICA has acquired the Stirling Fibre Group, Cutts Recycling and Futur Ltd in a bid to secure recycled paper feedstock for the Partington mill.
The mill uses recovered paper from households and businesses to produce containerboard, which is then sent to SAICA’s box plants to be made into cardboard boxes.
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