Espoo, Finland 13 December 2012 -- Metsä Board has announced plans to sell its French Alizay office paper mill. This was confirmed by the French department of Eure that said it wanted to acquire the site for a total of €22.2m in order to resell it to different buyers. Thai paper manufacturer Double A intends to buy the properties and assets needed to restart paper activities for an amount of €15m while French energy company Neoen is to take over energy operations for €3m. The remaining land and parcels are to be managed by EPFN (Établissement Public Foncier de Normandie) who will develop new activities and create a river port, amongst others.

The department of Eure explained it acted as a mediator between Metsä Board and the buyers since the two parties had not been able to find an agreement. The takeover was to guarantee reindustrialisation and exploit the economic potentials of the site, it added. Between 150 and 200 jobs are said to be created in a first step, and possibly 250 in the long term. According to Metsä Board, an agreement on the sale to the department of Eure will probably be signed before the end of the year.

A spokesman of French trade union Filpac CGT said that Double A would continue to produce office paper at Alizay with an unchanged capacity of around 300,000 tpy and also planned to add copy A paper to the product portfolio. The group would initially only use virgin fibre as a raw material but envisaged to continue production of recycled office paper at a later time, he added. Operations are scheduled to be resumed in April 2013.

In October 2011, Metsä Board had decided to close down the Alizay mill and stopped paper production. The site was permanently shut down in early 2012.