A deal has been struck to build the UK’s largest tissue paper mill on a 211-acre site in Goole in east Yorkshire.
Subject to planning approval, Finnish loo roll manufacturer Metsä Tissue has agreed to buy the site from property developer Wykeland Group.
The development is said to be worth “hundreds of millions of pounds” – £500m or more – over the next decade, with the facility being completed in phases.
Up to 45% of tissue products are currently imported into the UK and Ireland. Metsä Tissue aims to replace almost half of the imported products with local British production, using fresh fibre pulp as the main raw material from Scandinavian forests.
The Goole mill would have a production capacity for 240,000 tonnes of tissue products a year, increasing the UK’s self-sufficiency by more than 30%.
Esa Kaikkonen, CEO of Metsä Tissue, said: “Goole is the perfect location for this proposed investment. The Humber region provides a crucial gateway to the whole of the United Kingdom and the region’s ambitions to bring cutting-edge green technology and jobs to the UK matches our ambitions in clean, sustainable manufacturing.”
Metsä Tissue currently operates nine mills across Europe. The planned Goole mill would be the company’s biggest in terms of scale of investment and production, although its brands –Lambi, Serla, Tento and Mola – are not household names in the UK.
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