In the light of the many twists and turns in the soap opera of the Chapelle-Darblay paper mill, in Grand-Couronne (Seine-Maritime), near Rouen, we will beware of any hasty conclusion. But the decision of the metropolis of Rouen, announced in October 2021 and formalized on Friday February 11, to pre-empt the 33-hectare site, largely opens the way to maintaining the historic paper processing and recycling activity of this nonagenarian factory.
Although still profitable, it was closed – but not dismantled – in June 2020 by its Finnish owner, UPM, on the grounds of a lack of competitiveness and the structural decline of newsprint. Two hundred and twenty-eight employees were made redundant. Rare, the legal action of the metropolis cancels in any case the sale of the Normandy stationery, by UPM, to the Samfi Invest-Paprec consortium, signed in November 2021 and relating to both a project for the production of hydrogen and sorting of waste.
“This project would exclude the activity of recycling and in situ treatment of paper and cardboard, whereas we precisely want to preserve it and develop the know-how of La Chapelle-Darblay in terms of the circular economy”, advances the socialist president of the Rouen metropolis, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol. A central player in the French waste paper recycling sector and the only one to produce totally recycled paper, the Rouen paper mill could absorb 480,000 tonnes per year, the result of the sorting of 24 million inhabitants. These tonnages, since the closure, are transported by road to the east of France and abroad.
The optimistic unions
Mr. Mayer-Rossignol hopes to acquire the factory to resell it in stride to an industrial player, at the beginning of May, if the plan goes off without a hitch. “The metropolis is not destined to become a paper manufacturer”, he assures. The duo associating the Veolia group, world leader in water and waste, and Fiber Excellence, producer of paper pulp, is in a privileged position. In October 2021, he had submitted a takeover offer in extremis, the day before a crucial board of directors of UPM, finally rejected because considered less solid by the Finnish giant.
Its project, still relevant and refined in recent months, plans to produce 400,000 tonnes of “corrugated paper”, for the cardboard packaging market. One hundred and twenty million euros would be invested to transform the paper machines and modernize the biomass boiler already present. “Veolia and Fiber Excellence work hand in hand to propose a project in the best conditions”, reacted the two partners as soon as the metropolitan preemption was made official, hailed as a “essential prerequisite for the implementation of a paper project”. Essential, but not yet decisive.
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