Visited with @Minor @Dora Grew Up and @Macka
History:
Paper has been manufactured on the Aylesford Newsprint site since 1922, formely under the name of Aylesford Paper Mill and laterly by Aylesford Newsprint. The entire area has a history which revolved around the paper and packaging industry for decades, but this has been in steep decline in the last 20 years or so. The plant at Aylesford was the last remaining part of this industry in this area, but it to has now ceased to be a viable business and has been closed since March 2015.
Aylesford Newsprint was a long-established major employer in the area and was the largest paper recycling factory in Europe, manufacturing newsprint for the newspaper industry mainly for the London press. The mill was heavily modernised in the 1990's with millions of pounds spent on a state of the art warehousing system and significant new production equipment which is what you see today.
When it closed, the mill employed 230 people and produced more than 400,000 tons of newprint from 500,000 tons of recycled paper every year.
The Explore:
This was the first site of the day, arriving at 4:45 am we thought we'd have enough time before meeting the others in Dover at 7, oh were we wrong. This place was so much more than we expected, its huge and there is so much to see. Getting in was easy enough, a little too easy it seemed but we were here for about 3 hours, however a lot of the machinery has been sold off, the big printing presses bar one have been removed, leaving massive holes in the floors and a lot of huge valves and motors lay palleted up ready to be shipped out. Demolition was underway on the site, Various huge demo machines being parked all around the site and as we found out later in the morning as the construction workers had come onto site while we were in one of the office blocks and started to demolish it further causing us to make a hasty exit but we managed to get some cool shots, so anyway
onto the pics
and a squad shot to finish
thanks for looking
History:
Paper has been manufactured on the Aylesford Newsprint site since 1922, formely under the name of Aylesford Paper Mill and laterly by Aylesford Newsprint. The entire area has a history which revolved around the paper and packaging industry for decades, but this has been in steep decline in the last 20 years or so. The plant at Aylesford was the last remaining part of this industry in this area, but it to has now ceased to be a viable business and has been closed since March 2015.
Aylesford Newsprint was a long-established major employer in the area and was the largest paper recycling factory in Europe, manufacturing newsprint for the newspaper industry mainly for the London press. The mill was heavily modernised in the 1990's with millions of pounds spent on a state of the art warehousing system and significant new production equipment which is what you see today.
When it closed, the mill employed 230 people and produced more than 400,000 tons of newprint from 500,000 tons of recycled paper every year.
The Explore:
This was the first site of the day, arriving at 4:45 am we thought we'd have enough time before meeting the others in Dover at 7, oh were we wrong. This place was so much more than we expected, its huge and there is so much to see. Getting in was easy enough, a little too easy it seemed but we were here for about 3 hours, however a lot of the machinery has been sold off, the big printing presses bar one have been removed, leaving massive holes in the floors and a lot of huge valves and motors lay palleted up ready to be shipped out. Demolition was underway on the site, Various huge demo machines being parked all around the site and as we found out later in the morning as the construction workers had come onto site while we were in one of the office blocks and started to demolish it further causing us to make a hasty exit but we managed to get some cool shots, so anyway
onto the pics
and a squad shot to finish
thanks for looking