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St Regis studies environmentally sustainable energy supplies at Kemsley Mill

St Regis Paper Company Limited (St Regis) has submitted a request for Scoping Opinion to Kent County Council with a view to applying for permission to increase power generation at its Kemsley paper mill, near Sittingbourne.

The Kemsley site is already home to a gas-fired combined heat and power (CHP) plant as well as a smaller energy plant that produces steam from waste products arising from the paper mill’s operations.

Maintaining an efficient and sustainable energy supply position is important to the future success of a large paper-making business such as Kemsley Mill. The mill is one of the largest European manufacturers of recycled corrugated case material (CCM), which is used for producing corrugated packaging. The site handles some one million tonnes of UK-sourced waste paper every year.

Now, in response to the substantial increases in fossil fuel costs over recent years, St Regis has identified a need to reduce the mill’s reliance on fossil fuels by developing a new Sustainable Energy Plant. The fuel feedstock for this would be hard-to-recycle materials that would be sourced and pre-treated off-site and would otherwise go to waste.

The new facility, which would be developed by E.ON, which also owns and operates the existing power plants at Kemsley, would help provide a long-term source of environmentally sustainable energy for the mill. It would enhance the competitiveness of the paper-making operations at Kemsley and work in conjunction with the existing power plants producing both steam and electricity.

St Regis Environmental Director Mike Collins said: “We are still at an early stage of assessing how we take this project forward. As the development of the project proposal progresses we will communicate fully with local stakeholders and carry out the appropriate consultation, planning and regulatory processes.

“The development of the proposed new facility demonstrates St Regis’ further commitment to maintaining the longer-term competitiveness of Kemsley Mill, following the £100m investment made during 2008 to produce high-quality light-weight CCM on the site. It will also help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels while making use of resources that would otherwise go to landfill.”

E.ON’s Nader Bahri added: “We are delighted to be working with St Regis to see how we can use our technical expertise to provide the plant with a long term sustainable power supply that makes use of waste material in place of gas to produce the steam and electricity that is critical to their business.”

For further information, please contact:
Philip Jones, Maxim PR & Marketing (for St Regis), 01892 513033
Mike Churchman, Churchmans Marketing Communications, 01628 639404
Emily Highmore, E.ON UK, 02476 183680

Note to editors
The Scoping Opinion is the first stage in preparing an application for planning permission. The purpose of the scoping report is to establish what will be studied in the Environmental Impact Assessment and how the studies will be completed. The scoping report gives the local planning authority and other consultees an opportunity to identify the extent and content of the Environmental Statement prior to its preparation. Kent County Council’s scoping opinion will then confirm the topics that will be included in the Environmental Statement.

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January 2010

Press Release

Just over a year ago, on 12th January 2009, St Regis began producing K-light on its high tech paper machine at Kemsley Mill. Since then, K-light, the first high quality lightweight paper to be manufactured in the UK, has raised the standard for other lightweight papers in terms of performance, consistency and service support. There has been a heavyweight investment in this lightweight paper. DS Smith Plc, the parent company of St Regis, acquired facilities from m-real at a total cost of over £100 million, including expenditure on a whole new infrastructure. Kemsley Mill has one of the most technically advanced stock preparation plants in Europe incorporating highly sophisticated fractionation, screening and reject handling processes.

The vast majority of K-light produced by the 260,000 tonne capacity machine has been sold domestically, displacing imports of variable quality. Trials in the early part of 2009 had already shown that K-light’s technical performance made it the best lightweight corrugated paper on the market. It has continued to prove itself since then, consistently beating lightweight papers from Continental Europe. In fact, performance tests show K-light is over 26% stronger than some lightweight papers. This superior strength has been seen to translate into increased box strength, with some results in excess of 10% higher than competitive products.

K-light also meets the need for more sustainable packaging by helping to minimise material use in boxes. Made 100% from recycled paper, products made from K-light can be recycled again and again, ensuring the fibres go round and round in the ‘corrugated loop’.

All this is a great tribute to the team that runs the highly advanced PM6 machine at Kemsley which makes paper 6.7 metres wide at a rate of more than one kilometre a minute. The standards of service have also been high with punctual delivery schedules. St Regis supplies some customers immediately from stock and can spring to the rescue of others when imported papers fail to arrive. This really is British manufacturing at its best. The success of K-light helps to underpin the future of Kemsley paper mill which employs directly and indirectly around 1000 people in the area.

 

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17th August 2009

Press Release

2009

St Regis Consolidates Presence at Kemsley Mill

In a move designed to strengthen customer service as well as save costs, St Regis Head Office, previously located in Maidenhead, Berkshire has relocated to Kemsley Mill in Kent.

 

From August 1st  2009, St Regis departments including sales and customer service, production planning, marketing, purchasing, finance, human resources and environmental services will be housed in offices adjoining the world-class mill. The senior management team will also be based at the mill.

 

In the past year alone, parent company DS Smith Plc, has invested over £100 million in Kemsley Mill which manufactures the UK’s only domestically produced lightweight CCM paper, K-light. Following the launch of K-light, Kemsley accounts for over 70% of St Regis total production by volume.

 

Nick Britton, St Regis Sales and Marketing Director, commented: “This is a logical move which puts all our key specialists directly in touch with our main production centre. We are always looking for ways to improve our customer service and we believe having our sales people in constant contact with mill personnel will bring some real benefits.”

 

The new contact details for St Regis are:

 

St Regis Paper Company Ltd.

Head Office

Kemsley Mill

Sittingbourne

Kent ME10 2TD

Tel +44(0)1795 518900

Fax +44(0)1795 518931

www.stregis.co.uk

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Press Release

22nd May 2009

Kemsley Mill open day attracts major UK Corrugators

Visitors from the UK’s leading board and box making companies were treated to a dazzling display of engineering excellence when St Regis’ Kemsley Mill threw open its doors on May 20th.

Volunteers from the operations staff acted as tour guides, talking their guests through every stage of the production of K-light, the UK’s only domestically produced lightweight paper.

Starting in the waste yard where, every day, 2500 tonnes of recovered waste paper is sent for recycling, the tour took in a close-up view of one of Europe’s most sophisticated fibre refining processes and the newly rebuilt PM6 machine, producing K-light paper at the rate of just under one kilometre every minute.

Inspection of samples in the paper laboratory confirmed K-light’s superiority over continental competitor papers. The high quality of K-light has turned it into a runaway sales success with positive endorsements streaming in from corrugators all over the country.

On hand to greet the guests who included a representative from DEFRA, was Tony Thorne, Chief Executive of DS Smith Plc and Chris Rosser, Managing Director of St Regis. In his speech of welcome, Chris Rosser praised the huge engineering effort which went into making the PM6 rebuild the fastest project of its kind in the world. He commented: “We have invested over £100 million in order to produce 260,000 tonnes of K-light every year. This shows our total commitment to the corrugated case materials market. We’re delighted that K-light has been greeted so warmly by our customers who can now lightweight their board and boxes with complete confidence.”

For more information contact: Mike Churchman 01628 639404

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Press Release

4th March 2009

K-light is proving to be a great success

Since its launch on January 12th, trials of K-light have been taking place with customers all over the country. The results have been outstanding with K-light’s technical performance proving it to be the best lightweight corrugated paper on the market today.

St Regis technical support team conducted trials on a wide range of corrugators with speeds ranging up to 350 metres a minute. K-light’s consistent weight and moisture profile, as well as the quality of the paper formation, ensured that it ran smoothly without any problems on all of the 25 machines trialled. The superior strength performance of K-light has been seen to translate into increased box strength, with some results more than 10% higher than competitive products.

K-light is now in commercial production and is being manufactured at a rate in excess of 700 tonnes per day.

All this is greeted with considerable satisfaction by St Regis which has invested over £100 million in the new K-light facilities at Kemsley Mill. The annual production of 260,000 tonnes could not have come at a better time as the costs of imported lightweight papers have risen due to the sterling exchange rate.

For more information contact:

Mike Churchman 01628 639404
Nick Britton 01628 583330

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