Tork Relaunch UK Mill With Help From Local MP And Mayor

The local MP and Mayor of West Lancashire turned out at Tork manufacturer SCA’s Skelmersdale site today for a special ribbon cutting ceremony to relaunch the site after a major revamp.

Skelmersdale Mill has virtually doubled in size and taken on 100 extra staff following a multi-million pound investment which has seen the addition of nine new production lines. The most recent of these to come on stream produces Tork SmartOne toilet tissue, one of the company’s leading product lines.

Mayor of West Lancashire Nikki Hennessey was in attendance as part of her year-round celebration of the local community, while MP for West Lancashire Rosie Cooper cut the ceremonial ribbon to launch the new production line.

As well as the ribbon cutting, the Mayor and MP were treated to a brief tour of the facility, and a presentation highlighting just some of the work that SCA do worldwide, as well as in the local area.

Speaking after the ribbon cutting, Site Manager Mark Mannering said: “I think it’s been a good day. It’s great to raise the awareness of SCA in the local area – a lot of people know the brands but don’t often know who we are and what we do, and we noticed from the Mayor and Rosie’s visit, they didn’t expect the site to be of this size and scale.”

The mill previously employed around 190 people. According to Mark “the development of the mill doubles our capacity and makes us SCA’s main production site for the UK professional market. We expect to see a significant increase in volume of products exported to other markets across Europe.”

Besides Tork SmartOne, other leading products manufactured at the Lancashire mill include Tork Reflex Centrefeed.

SCA is the largest consumer tissue company in the UK and Ireland. The Skelmersdale mill is one of six SCA paper mills across the UK. Rolls of paper made at other SCA mills are taken to the Skelmersdale site where they are converted into finished products.

And Mark believes that the site could continue to expand in the future. He said: “We have the opportunity and potential to grow. We have seen our volume double, but we still have more capacity on this site, so another 50% of that volume we could absorb again, so we’ve really put the foundations down for long term growth potential here on site.”

The mill, acquired by SCA in 1999, has a number of ongoing programmes in place to minimise environmental impact. Skelmersdale is committed to responsibly recycling all waste and aims to reduce usage of electricity and gas on a year-by-year basis.

www.tork.co.uk