Approval for north Wales paper mill plan will create 660 jobs

Alec Doyle Local Democracy Reporter

Plans to turn part of a north Wales paper mill site into a major tissue manufacturing facility that will create 660 new jobs have been approved.

Flintshire County Council’s Planning Committee has given the green light to the plans, which will see part of the existing mill site on Deeside Industrial Estate transformed to produce tissue paper.

Frontrunner

The application is part of a £1bn investment by the mill’s Turkish owners Eren Holdings to transform the site into one of the UK’s largest cardboard and tissue recycling and production sites.

The new facility will be 31.85m tall and take up 0.7 hectares of land adjacent to Weighbridge Road – repurposing the existing building.

According to the application, the redevelopment of the site will allow Eren Holdings to retain the existing 190 full time workers on site and increase employment by an additional 660 people.

“This is great news for the area,” said Buckley Pentrobin Cllr Mike Peers. “It is comparable with existing developments in the area and will create much needed new jobs.”

Throughout the 1990s the paper mill produced paper for newsprint,  employing 530 people. Three years ago the site, which had recently been in decline due to reduced demand for newsprint, was sold by UPM to Eren Holdings.

Global leader

The family-owned business employs 14,000 people globally in energy production, paper manufacturing and retail.

The proposed development is near the Shotton Lagoons and Reedbeds SSSI as well as the River Dee Special Protection areas, which are home to large breeding grounds of rare and protected wildlife including Common Terns.

But officers highlighted that investigations had determined there would be no adverse impact as the development is on land that is already in use.

“There is no direct impact on the SSSI due to the repurposing of land within the paper mill footprint,” said Senior Planning Officer Claire Morter.

“A site-wide Landscape and Ecological Management Plan (LEMP) has been approved as part of the wider redevelopment which follows the step wise approach in terms of providing biodiversity net gain.”