PM visits Aylesford as election campaign kicks off

The visit was one of Mr Brown's first stops on the Labour Party campaign trail, and he toured the site accompanied by his wife Sarah and the Labour MP for Chatham and Aylesford, Jonathan Shaw.

While being shown around the 100-acre site, which only uses recovered newspapers and magazines in its papermaking process, Mr Brown saw one of the mill's two papermaking machines, PM14, and the automated warehouse.

Having expressed an interest in Aylesford's Advanced Apprenticeship Scheme, the Prime Minister also spoke to a group of both current and recent apprentices, as well as other members of staff.

Before leaving, Mr Brown said how impressed he was with the equipment and the people at Aylesford and said that everyone at the mill should be very proud of the company.

Mr Brown was shown around the facility by managing director Bengt Blomberg and finance director Ian Broxup.

The Aylesford Newsprint site is located in the Chatham and Aylesford constituency, one of several marginal Labour seats which is being targeted by the Conservatives in the local area.

It was the first newsprint mill to make 100% recycled newsprint, back in 1984, and it is home to a de-inking and pulping plant with an annual input capacity of 500,000 tonnes.

The papermaking machine seen by Mr Brown, PM14, is the larger and faster of the site's two machines, at 120 metres long and 9.4 metres wide and operating at 1,680 metres per minute.

Mr Brown's wife Sarah used social networking site Twitter to comment on the visit to Aylesford, including a photograph of the paper mill itself and one of Mr Brown talking to apprentices. For more click here: http://twitter.com/sarahbrown10