"This is the first time a community has pre-empted a site of this scale with its production assets." underlines the mayor of Rouen and president of the Rouen Normandy Metropolis, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol.
During his closure in July 2020, the Chapelle Darblay paper mill of the UPM Group employed 230 people and had a recycling capacity of 480,000 tonnes/year. Today, after months and months of mobilization, this French industrial flagship is finally saved: the site located near Rouen in Seine-Maritime will restart and it will remain a paper mill.
Supported by union representatives Arnaud Dauxerre and Cyril Biffault and by 80 mayors and members of parliament from all over France, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol exercised his right of pre-emption to buy the factory and save it from dismantling.
Indeed, in October 2021, the Finnish UPM had committed to sell the site to a consortium of two partners, Samfi and Paprec France, whose project excluded the recycling and processing of paper and cardboard. The pre-emption procedure launched by the Metropole Rouen Normandie in February 2022 had cancelled the sale, UPM said in a statement.
Yesterday, Tuesday, May 10, 2022, UPM sold the factory to the Metropole Rouen Normandie. The pre-emption was only a short step. In the wake of this, the metropolis transferred the site to Veolia, "takeover has the ability to preserve and develop know-how in the field of circular economy" according to Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol.
"This is a historic decision for ecology, the circular economy and reindustrialization in France. And it's happening in the Rouen agglomerationeuros!" nicolas Mayer-Rossignol is pleased. The dismantling of this site would have led the Rouen communities to bury or burn their paper waste or to send it abroad rather than recycling it.
Veolia, in association with the Fibre Excellence Group, plans to convert the PM6 machine to produce 400,000 tons of paper for packaging (PPO).
