Recalling his late father Richard's dream to build the world's most sustainable, modern, and efficient kraft paper mill, Anthony Pratt said he was "proud that stage two of the mill had earned Visy Tumut world-wide praise as a shining example of a sustainably managed mill with a low environmental footprint." It is also the biggest single investment on any one site that Visy has ever undertaken.
Visy's A$550 million expansion doubles production capacity at the Tumut mill and takes total investment in the project to almost A$1 billion, the biggest single investment on any one site that Visy has ever undertaken.
Pratt also announced during the opening that Visy planned to spend an initial A$100 million to build a 30 MW clean energy plant on the Tumut mill site. "I have a dream that in the not-too-distant future, Visy Tumut will spend around A$100 million to expand our clean energy generation here and take in additional waste forest wood to generate clean renewable energy and sell it into the power grid. An additional 30 MW clean energy plant here at Tumut would be another big step along the way towards my vision of making clean energy a whole new business division for Visy," Pratt said.
Pratt's plans for the clean energy plant at Tumut follow his commitment four years ago to invest A$1 billion in paper recycling and waste-to-energy infrastructure at a Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York, N.Y., USA. The Tumut plant will be the second such plant in Australia and the Pratt family's third in the world.
Visy is building a similar plant at its Coolaroo manufacturing and recycling plant in Melbourne, Australia. Last year, Visy's U.S. associate, Pratt Industries, commissioned a $60 million (U.S. dollars) energy plant in Conyers, Ga., USA, that converts waste from its manufacturing into gas. The next Australian clean energy plant after Tumut is expected to be at Smithfield in Sydney's west. It is expected to cost between A$50 million and A$100 million.
Visy currently generates renewable energy from waste wood and other bi-products to help power the Tumut mill. Pratt noted that over the past decade, 1.2 million MW of energy had been generated from renewable sources at the mill, enough to power 160,000 homes in NSW for a year. In the 2009-10 financial year, the first to incorporate the upgrade, the mill's on-site renewable and co-generation system produced 73% of total energy and 42% of power for the plant.
The Tumut mill also generates 190,000 to 250,000 NSW greenhouse gas abatement certificates each year through renewable energy production and energy-efficient investments. "My vision for Visy Tumut is not only to keep our position as an example of world's sustainable manufacturing, but to build on it," Pratt said.
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