Two years after it was put up for sale and one year after it stopped producing, the Chapelle Darblay recycled newsprint mill finally has a buyer. The Finnish UPM announced Friday that it has signed an agreement to sell its paper mill located in Grand-Couronne in Seine-Maritime to a consortium of two partners Samfi and Paprec France at the expense of Veolia and Fibre Excellence.
Based in Normandy, Samfi, which employs 3,000 people, specializes in transport and logistics, renewable energies, hydrogen and advertising displays. With its 12,500 employees, Paprec France, based in La Courneuve, collects and recycles 12 million tons of materials per year.
"The sale of Chapelle Darblay is an asset sale, and no personnel will be transferred." says the UPM Group. Samfi and Paprec plan to invest 450 million euros and employ 250 people.
The industrial duo intends to transform the recycling plant into a "A platform for the supply of green energy and the production of raw materials from recycling .
The new site will include a paper and plastics sorting and packaging plant, a biomass electricity production unit and a renewable hydrogen production unit.
The French water, waste and energy management group Veolia, in partnership with French pulp producer Fibre Excellence, had officially positioned itself to take over the site the day before the announcement. With an investment of 120 million euros and 250 jobs, the two groups wanted to manufacture 400,000 tons of packaging board from paper and cardboard collected in France and install a biomass cogeneration boiler fed by organic waste to generate the energy needed for production.
