Norske Skog has officially started up the new recycled corrugated case material machine at its Golbey mill in Eastern France on 22 May. The paper machine has a production capacity of up to 550,000 tonnes per year. The company reports that deliveries to customers will start during the current quarter. Capacity utilisation is expected to reach 50-60 per cent towards the end of 2025 and full utilisation of 95 per cent during the first half of 2027.
The company had started the conversion of the former PM 1 newsprint machine in the fourth quarter of 2022. The total investment for the "project Box" was now put at €400m. At full capacity utilisation, the Golbey mill is expected to generate annual revenues of around NOK5bn (€435m) in 2027/28.
This new machine further expands Norske Skog's presence in the packaging paper market which it entered only in 2023. First intentions to enter this market were officially expressed by the company in 2020.
The newsprint machine at the Bruck site in Austria was the first of two machines to be converted to containerboard production. This machine is smaller than the one in Golbey, with a capacity of 210,000 tpy of recycled corrugated case material, and started commercial production in May 2023.
The Golbey paper mill houses a second paper machine (PM2), which continues to produce newsprint. It has a capacity of 330,000 tpy. When both machines are running at capacity, they will consume 1.06 million tonnes of recovered paper and board a year, including 610,000 tonnes of old corrugated containers (OCC), according to Norske Skog.
Norske Skog's packaging paper still recorded losses in the first quarter of the year. The division's operating loss stood at NOK67m (around €5.8m). However, the company attributed this mainly to fixed costs of NOK60-65m being shifted from the publication paper to the packaging paper division, given the conversion of the PM in Golbey. In general, Norske Skog was satisfied with the performance of the sector.
The containerboard machine in Bruck is nearing full capacity, with deliveries in the first quarter amounting to 48,000 tonnes. Full capacity is expected to be reached during the first half of the year.
New biomass-fuelled power plant at Golbey site
In addition to the new paper machine, a new cogeneration plant fuelled with biomass and residues which is to produce 200 GWh of electricity and over 700 GWh of renewable heat per year was built at the site. It is operated by Green Valley Energie, a joint venture majority-owned by Pearl Infrastructure Capital (80 per cent), with Veolia and Norske Skog Golbey each holding 10 per cent stakes.
According to Pearl Infastructure, the plant will use approximately 230,000 tonnes a year of class B waste wood fuel, that is, painted, coated or otherwise treated non-hazardous wood, for instance from furniture or demolition projects. In addition, about 20,000 tonnes of papermaking residues will be recovered in the power plant.
About 50,000 tonnes of other production wastes from Golbey will be jointly managed by the waste management companies B+T Environnement and Citraval. Citraval is a subsidiary of Schroll group, which was recently taken over by Remondis.
