Steel frames enlarge Deeside production facility

More than 1,400t of steelwork has been installed for the expansion and modification of the Shotton Tissue Mill facility in Deeside, North Wales.

Owned by Turkish-based Eren Holding, the facility will become one of the UK’s largest recycled paper manufacturing plants, producing containerboard packaging and tissue paper products.

Working on behalf of main contractor Stellar UK and architect/engineer Prokon Muhendislik, Severfield fabricated, supplied and erected the project’s steelwork.

Severfield’s work included the refurbishment of the site’s main tissue mill building, a steel-framed structure originally built in 1988 that measures 210m-long x 28m-wide. The roof and cladding were removed, and the existing steelwork was strengthened (an operation that required extensive on-site welding). Steelwork extensions were then connected to the top of each column, raising the height of the building by 3m, before the new roof was installed.

A total of 420m of crane beams and rails were removed, refurbished and then reinstated inside the enlarged building, alongside alterations and strengthening works to an existing mezzanine.

Adjacent to the construction site, other parts of the facility remained operational and so the entire steelwork package was delivered in a ‘live’ environment, requiring a considerable amount of logistical and forward-planning.

The project was also delivered through a phased construction programme, with the main building divided into multiple work areas and sub-phases to support the client’s requirement to install key machinery during ongoing construction activities.

During the erection of the tissue mill, two bays of roof purlins and bracing were intentionally left incomplete, alongside an early phased handover of sections of crane beams. This allowed access for a specialist heavy lifting operation to install a large-scale production machine, used to manufacture the primary tissue reels before conversion into finished products.

Elsewhere on the site, a new bale handling building, which links into the tissue mill, was erected, and three new metal decked floors were added to an office and workshop building. The latter also included strengthening works and the installation of hot-rolled secondary steelwork for the new cladding system.

A new steel-propped portal-framed reel store building, (measuring 108m-long x 31m-wide) was erected. Abutting an existing roll store building, both structures now share a new steel canopy, formed with 21m-long rafters and erected along one gable end.

The steelwork erection was completed during a 16-month programme and required the use of a single 350t-capacity mobile crane working alongside mobile tower cranes.

Summing up, Severfield Senior Project Manager Andy Bramley, said: “As there was an international project team, we had to work closely with the main contractor and design team to coordinate technical information, resolve detailing issues and maintain programme progression throughout the works.

“This was a challenging and complex project, which was helped by the invaluable experience and tenacity of our Senior Site Manager, Scott Brownley, who delayed his retirement by several months in order to complete a job, which was his swansong to the steel industry.”