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Newsprint sector waits for news from WRAP panel

Tension is mounting within the newsprint manufacturing sector over when WRAP will announce which newsprint recycling project will receive funding support.

WRAP – the Waste and Resources Action Programme – has appointed an undisclosed panel of experts to help it reach a decision. There has been some controversy over the panel and it is thought that some of the original names put forward have now stepped down.

But, the panel does include a construction expert in the form of Ken Howells of construction management company Schal, a former president of the Paper Federation, Stefan Kay, and an infrastructure financial expert, Edward Rham. It is thought that WRAP chief executive Jennie Price has drawn on her experience in the construction sector to help appoint the panel.

Nick Francis, a WRAP board member, who has long experience in the paper sector is not on the panel assessing the bid but instead is heading up a separate WRAP study into
recycled fibre usage in the UK paper and board industry. This aims to establish potential for increased usage as well as examining best practice technology. The findings will help set future WRAP policy on support for increasing use of recycled paper.

WRAP's work on newsprint funding is expected to focus on the three UK contenders for the project, Aylesford Newsprint, Bridgewater Paper and Shotton Paper. All three produce newspaper with a recycled content, with Aylesford at 100%.

Paper industry members have spoken of the importance of the WRAP process. One said: “The UK has a poor utilisation capability and unless we have new capacity here we are going to have to rely on the export market.”

Another said that the export market should only be seen as a safety valve for the increasing tonnage being generated in the UK and that new capacity at home is essential, especially as the paper industry within Europe has agreed to reach higher levels of recycling.

One company watching the UK situation closely is Holmen. Unlike Stora Enso – which has committed itself to a newsprint recycling plant in Langebrugge, Belgium – Holmen is still to decide whether it is to build a proposed new plant and whether it will be in Spain or Sweden as has been suggested. The Holmen decision is likely to be influenced by the UK project and its president Per Ericson told letsrecycle.com that no decision on whether the new paper machine would be in Spain or Sweden had yet been made. Currently its Spanish mill takes in about 200,000 tonnes of used newspapers and magazines a year.

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