Paper maker UPM has shut down coated paper production at its mill in Stracel, France, following staff consultations.

The company has been talking to the central workers’ council of UPM France and the mill workers’ council since last July. It follows an asset review designed to adjust magazine paper capacity to customer needs.

Stracel had been producing 270,000 tonnes of coated magazine  a year, and current customers will now be served from other UPM mills.

Negotiations over the sale of assets and some land to a joint venture between VPK Packaging and Klingele Papierwerke are continuing.

Jyrki Ovaska, president of UPM’s paper business group says time has been taken to find “the best possible solution” for the mill and its 250 employees: “The process was done together with all relevant stakeholders and we want to thank them all for their cooperation,” he says.

He says the VPK/Klingele project – which will convert the mill to producea recycled fibre based containerboard– is serious and provides an option to create a new industrial future for the site and some of its employees. “The aim is to conclude these negotiations as soon as possible,” he says.

UPM invested in newsprint production at the site near Strasbourg – 500 kilometres east of Paris – in 1988 after acquiring a pre-war pulp mill there. It shut the pulp mill in 1999 when it switched production to magazine paper. Products included matt, satin, book papers, UPM Ultra SH and Cote X.