He told his audience that he was delighted “by Shotton’s decision to convert to recycled fibre. It proves all the doubters wrong when they say it is not commercially viable to recycle.”
The Prince, who visited the mill during his annual Welsh tour, also spoke of the importance of recycling. Noting how the mill will divert paper from landfill, he said this will be “of huge benefit to the environment and also be saving emissions from these sites.”
And, he expressed his surprise at how the UK has traditionally had low recycling rates, commenting: “It has always amazed me how in this country we are not so disciplined as other European countries when it comes to recycling.”
Both UPM-Kymmene, the Finnish paper giant which owns UPM-Shotton, and the Waste and Resources Action Programme were praised by Prince Charles. Remarking on “the splendid acronym of WRAP”, he welcomed the “very generous support” for the project.
Impressed
UPM-Kymmene’s commitment to a modern development at Shotton was also noted by the Prince. “I could not be more impressed. None of this would be possible I know without the hard work of the staff and contractors and UPM Kymmene. I hope this will be a model which will start a nationwide trend.”
Earlier in the day Hartmut Wurster, president of the newsprint division of UPM-Kymmene had spoken of how the “100% Shotton project” was the largest investment of his Corporation last year at a cost of 127 million Euros which saw the conversion of the mill to utilising 100% recovered paper from the municipal waste stream. “The Shotton mill,” he said, “is now on of the most modern newsprint paper mills in the world”.
 The drum pulper at the start of the UPM-Shotton recycling process |
Mr Wurster said: “UPM-Shotton is a very good place to make newsprint. The mill serves the UK, the biggest newsprint market in Europe, it is located very close to the printing plants of many of the main UK newspaper publishers and over 15 million people live within a radius of 100 miles of the mill. The collection sorting and transportation of recovered paper is therefore possible on a competitive level while contributing substantially to the reduction of the UK’s municipal waste problems by extracting 620,000 tonnes per annum. Today 50% of the resulting manufactured newsprint is delivered to customers within 70 miles of the mill.”
Boiler
The newsprint president also pointed to the next project at Shotton which will be the construction of a biofuel boiler to use sludge generated at the mill for its energy source. Planning permission is still needed for this.
On the local authority side, Mr Wurster said that Shotton now has “long term recovered paper supply contracts from 10 million households, this means about 32% of UK households, in a programme of habitual recycling of paper grades.” And, he claimed that “our contracts provide the critical mass of material to enable other household recyclables such as metals and plastics, to be recovered at the same time.”
Register for free to comment