UPM has ceased production at its Stracel mill in France, as announced earlier. The sale of the mill to VPK and Klingele is expected to be finalised soon.
UPM has finalised the employee information and consultation process at its French Stracel magazine paper mill and has definitively stopped production at the site as of 4 January. The company said the first employees would be laid off around the end of January. The current customers would be served from other UPM mills, the group added.
As the next step, UPM plans to proceed with its negotiations to sell the assets and part of the land of the site to VPK Packaging Group and Klingele Papierwerke. According to a UPM spokeswoman, the sale, which had been announced in July 2012, will be finalised within the next few days. After that, the new owner would start converting the mill which might take nine to twelve months, she added.
VPK Packaging Group and Klingele Papierwerke are planning to create a joint venture to produce recycled corrugated case material at Stracel. The site is to reach a capacity of 300,000 tpy of recycled fluting as well as testliner and to offer 140 jobs. The joint venture is reportedly willing to re-employ 130 out of the 250 current employees of the mill.
The sale of Stracel is part of UPM’s asset review aiming to adjust the company’s magazine paper capacity. The mill had a capacity of 270,000 tpy of LWC. However, the company had been producing at lower volumes since September 2012, the spokeswoman said, adding that production approached zero in the last few months.
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