The Finnish-Swedish company Stora Enso, one of the largest wood pulp and paper manufacturers in the world, is to invest 140 million Euros in its newspaper factory in Langerbrugge, Ghent. The Langerbrugge factory manufactures paper for newspapers and magazines for media companies in Belgium and neighbouring countries. The products are made completely from recycled paper. Stora Enso managing director, Jouko Karvinen, acknowledges that the rise of digital media will dent the company's newspaper division, but this does not mean that Stora Enso is giving up on it. 'The newspaper and magazine market will not disappear suddenly, but gradually get smaller,' he said. 'It will certainly continue for decades.' While Stora Enso and its competitors are systematically cutting back on capacity, large sums are still being invested in a limited number of factories. The Langerbrugge branch is one of those, and a brand new steam and power installation costing 140 million Euros was launched yesterday.

The new installation is intended to decrease the company's dependency on the capricious pricing of fossil fuels and runs on waste material, specifically unusable remains of collected paper as well as wood and plastic waste collected from municipal waste container sites and companies in the region. The power plant will thus receive Flemish green power and cogeneration certificates. 'The investment shows that Stora Enso intends to remain in Flanders for a long time," said Chris De Hollander, the factory's managing director. The politicians present at the inauguration yesterday also received a message. 'Ensure that paper collected from homes and companies can be processed locally where possible. Communal waste processing companies frequently and opportunistically chose to sell the collected paper to the highest bidder,' De Hollander said. This means that large quantities of Flemish waste paper are shipped to China.

Dlandersnews.be - Bruselas - GELFICA - 6 junio 2010