Consent for Deeside paper mill

A 700,000 sq ft facility within the former RAF Sealand site has been given the all-clear.

Italian tissue producer ICT Group submitted its plans within Flintshire’s Northern Gateway in November last year, putting in motion its intentions to build a production complex  taking up a 59-acre chunk of the Airfields site.

ICT – Industrie Cartarie Tronchetti – has mapped out its project as having three phases:

• The manufacturing and production area
• Ancillary offices
• Warehousing section with car parking and HGV parking.

The Welsh Goveornment said in May last year that it will provide £5m support for the development. It is also funding a spine road project at the Airfields site – covering RAF Sealand South Camp and extending to the former Corus steelworks.

Flintshire’s planning meeting was also asked to approve 100 homes by Clwyd Alyn Housing, to complete phase one of the Garden City scheme on the Corus site. Bellway is also looking to build 400 homes in that area, along with housing within the Airfields site.

The project team for ICT’s paper mill scheme includes architect Aew Architects, BWB, RPS, Curtins, Cundall, Amion, Tyler Grange, Spawforths, SGi Consulting Engineers, Arcadis and Barry Chinn Landscape Architects.

Paper is big business for Flintshire at present: last year Istanbul company Eren Holdings took over the former UPM Shotton mill site, announcing plans for a £600m redevelopment that would give the site the ability to recyvle “all the waste paper generated in Wales”. A consultation was launched last week.