The two companies designated by the Finnish UPM group want to install a hydrogen production unit, when local elected representatives would prefer to retain the recycling capabilities of the site, one of the largest in France.
Le Monde with AFP
The Finnish group UPM (United Paper Mills) voted on Friday October 15th, the sale of one of the largest paper recycling sites in France. The owner of the equipment of La Chapelle-Darblay, in Grande-Couronne (Seine-Maritime), wishes to yield to a group between French companies Paprec and Samfi Invest, but the Rouen-Normandy metropolis quickly announced to “use of His right of pre-emption “to redeem the site instead of selected candidates.
The Samfi-Paprec project “includes a waste sorting activity, without recycling, and the establishment within three to five years of a hydrogen production unit,” the metropolis reminded the metropolis. href=”https://www.metropole-rouen-normandie.fr/actualite/2021/chapel-darblay-la-metropole-rouen-normandie-vauuser-de-son-droit-de-preemption” target = ” _Blank “rel =” Noopener “title =” new window “> in a communiqué , Friday. “The skills and added value of [the Chapel-Darblay] in terms of paper recycling / cardboard, unique in France by their nature and industrial magnitude, would then be lost”, then argued the community to justify the launch of preemption procedure .
The sale of the Chapelle-Darblay, announced in September 2019 before its closure in June 2020, is closely monitored by the State and local authorities. The plant occupies a site of 33 hectares and could process up to 480,000 tonnes of old papers a year, the result of the sorting of 24 million people.
Veolia competing offer
Discussions between UPM and Samfi-Paprec have been in progress for several months. The project selected by UPM “initially provides for the grouping of PAPREC activities on the site with fifty jobs,” said France-Presse Agency (AFP) Julien Sénécal, Secretary CGT of the Social and Economic Committee. The company. “Samfi provides for 70 jobs on the horizon 2030 for a hypothetical hydrogen project,” he adds.
A redemption by Veolia, the world’s number of water and waste, had also been mentioned, but the group did not apply that Thursday, in partnership with the Popeier Fiber Excellence, the first French pastry producer merchant paper. In a statement, Veolia had promised 250 qualified jobs on the site that would be “essentially” from the “skills that were present before stopping the factory”.
The site “would produce 400,000 tonnes of packaging cardboard for a fast-growing international market, from recycled paper and cardboard, collected in France. The energy required for installation will be produced by a cogeneration boiler Biomass “, assured Veolia. The French multinational also provided for modernization of the production tool and the boiler, for 120 million euros of investment, in order to allow “the relocation of an industry that would leave France”, according to the words of its President and CEO, Antoine Frérot.
“There would have been no offer, it would have been different. But there there are credible industrial buyers. Veolia and Fiber Excellence are serious businesses, which put the order of the hundred Millions of euros on the table, “said the President of the Rouen-Normandie metropolis, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, AFP. The Minister of the Economy, Bruno The Mayor, and the Minister responsible for the industry, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, also felt that Veolia’s competing offer “deserves [Ait] to be examined in detail” .
When the UPM company has notified the metropolis its intention to sell to Samfi-Paprec, the community will have two months to assert its right of pre-emption, “said Mr Mayer-Rossignol. “The domain service will make an assessment of the site. Maybe the price will be lower than [UPM] expected with the sale to Samfi-Paprec, but it’s several million euros,” said the president From the metropolis to AFP. According to Mr Sénécal, SamFi filed an offer up to 7.5 million euros, while Veolia proposed 8 million to buy the site.