Palm Paper has announced plans to convert its newsprint machine in Kings Lynn into a machine for making papers used in corrugated board. This will end newsprint production in the UK as newsprint machines at Shotton and prior to that, Aylesford, have already been closed. That at Shotton has since been converted to produced corrugated case material.
Palm’s PM7 is one of the most modern newsprint machines in Europe having been built in 2009 on a greenfield site with a machine width of 10.6 metres and speed of 200m/min and has capacity to produce 400,000tpa.
However, the rate that demand for newsprint is dropping, 60% over the last ten years according to Palm, with little sign of stopping. “As Europe’s largest supplier of newsprint, we also need to adapt our production capacities to these changing market conditions,” says Palm.
As well as newsprint the machine has been able to produce supercalendered papers for heatset or coldset printing. But this is another sector that is declining fast.
The conversion is planned for the first three months of next year and will result in the mill being able to produce lightweight corrugated case material with a base weight starting at 60gsm. The machine will be able to produce 700,000 tonnes of this material a year.
It will go to existing customers in the UK and mainland Europe to be made into corrugated board and then boxes. This will almost certainly include Palm’s own site at Alenzau in Germany, which opened in May after a €200 million investment. In all Palm has 33 corrugated board plants across Europe.
Like newsprint, the corrugated case material that will be produced will come from 100% recovered fibres. Palm case contracts in place with local authorities too collect and deliver newspapers and magazines for recycling.
The closure will leave Palm with the ability to make 550,000 tonnes of newsprint a year from other facilities, including that at Eltmann which has been the target of €100 million of investment.
The demand for packaging materials is continuing to increase in contrast to newsprint. The latest figures from Cepi show container board production in 2025 increased by 1.6% in contrast to newsprint production which fell 7.3% in the year.
