Eren, a Turkish cardboard and corrugated packaging company, will redevelop its Shotton paper mill located in Flintshire, North Wales, UK, into an advanced, state-of-the-art containerboard and tissue manufacturing facility.
The Shotton mill redevelopment will include the transformation of the existing main site, expansion into the adjacent vacant land present north of the main site, and development of a combined heat and power (CHP) plant.
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The redevelopment project is estimated to involve an investment of £600m ($691.9m). It will be carried out in two phases. The first phase is scheduled to be operational in 148 acres in 2024, creating about 660 new jobs.
Shotton paper mill redevelopment background
In September 2021, Eren Paper, a subsidiary of Eren, acquired the Shotton newsprint paper mill site and related assets from UPM, a Finnish paper company, which sold it due to a decline in the demand for newsprint product because of lowering newspaper circulation. Eren retained all the existing employees during the transition to new ownership. The production at the site stopped in October 2021.
Subsequently, Eren submitted a proposal for the expansion of the paper mill and the necessary piling works to Flintshire County Council, while a proposal for the development of a new CHP facility with up to 60MW capacity at the mill will be submitted to the Welsh Government as the plan is a Development of National Significance (DNS).
Flintshire County Council’s planning committee approved the proposal in November 2022.
Location
The Shotton Mill is located within Deeside Industrial Park in Flintshire, UK. The site is currently accessible off Weighbridge Road and directly connects with the A548 dual carriageway and motorway network.
The site is also accessible to ports and has an existing private, clean water supply and infrastructure for renewable energy production and paper recycling.
Shotton paper mill redevelopment details
The 100,000m2 main site of the Shotton mill will be redeveloped with new buildings for the integration of two principal process units equipped with cardboard paper machine and corrugating machine. The cardboard paper machine will be the UK’s largest single machine with a capacity to produce 750,000 tonnes of containerboard a year. The machine will utilise approach flow systems, a wire section, a press section, a drying section, a finishing section and a roll handling system to produce.
Additional buildings for fibre storage tanks, auxiliary facilities, a new effluent treatment facility with anaerobic digestion and biogas capture technology, warehouses, dispatch infrastructure, chemicals, truck loading, conversion, administrative offices, and reel storage will also be developed, while the existing buildings, including the materials recycling facility and a biomass plant, will be retained.
The corrugating facility will have a production capacity of 110,000 tonnes a year of corrugated boxes. The vacant land adjacent to the main site will be developed into a 210,000t per annum tissue production and converting facility.
The containerboard building, warehouses, dispatch infrastructure, and the CHP boiler unit will be developed in the first phase of redevelopment, while the corrugated packaging facility and tissue production facility will be developed in the subsequent phase.
Products made at the new containerboard and tissue manufacturing facility
Brown paper will be manufactured as 10.1m wide jumbo reels in the containerboard facility using 100% recycled paper and card. The facility will use recyclable items from homes, such as glass and plastics, and the paper waste collected by local authorities across the UK for generating recycled paper and card.
The brown paper will further pass through the corrugating machine to be strengthened by crinkling for manufacturing cardboard. The cardboard sheets will be cut according to the customer’s requirements.
A combination of virgin and recycled pulp will be used in the tissue production facility to manufacture tissue products for the UK market.
Details of Shotton’s CHP facility
A new CHP facility with one 40MW unit and two 10MW units will be developed in the mill to support the expansion of the operation. The new CHP facility will supply highly efficient low-carbon energy to the mill, making it self-sufficient in energy resources.
Contractors involved
Arup, a company based in the UK, is leading the redevelopment project, supported by architects AHR. Arup and the team will provide project management, design and engineering inputs for the development of the first phase of the project.
Valmet, a Finnish pulp and paper company, will deliver old corrugated containers (OCC), stock preparation and containerboard lines (PM3) for the project with the scope of automation systems, industrial internet solutions and services. The new PM3 will use 100% recycled paper to produce high-quality testliner and fluting grades.
Valmet joined forces with Fimpec, a project management and engineering company based in Finland, on a comprehensive plant engineering commission related to OCC, stock preparation and PM3.
Fimpec will oversee plant engineering for the OCC area, stock preparation and PM3, and under separate commissions, the engineering for minor pipes in the chemical section and the machine line. The scope of work includes process, plant, steel structure, automation, and process ventilation engineering.
The planning applications for the redevelopment project in Deeside are being managed by environmental consultancy firm SLR Consulting.
