2017
Kings Lynn, United Kingdom
Palm Paper Limited is the UK subsidiary of the family owned German Palm Group, one of the leading companies in the European Paper industries.
Sika® concrete admixtures were the solution for CEMEX UK, when a special low shrinkage concrete was required on the Palm Papermill project, which has recently been constructed by the German company, Glass GMBH in Kings Lynn. The £400m plant, which has been called ‘Kings Lynn PM7’, will be the largest supplier of newsprint in Europe, producing 400,000 metric tons per year, with production based entirely on recycled waste paper.
Remarkably, construction of the mill was completed in only 12 months up to January 2009.
This was followed during 2009 by the installation of the paper machine, with production starting during the latter part of 2009.
Project Requirements
CEMEX UK, who supplied a total of 115,000 cubic metres of concrete to all parts of the project from their on-site plant, had a requirement in two specific areas for a concrete that would produce very low shrinkage on curing. For these areas, Sika® Control 40 concrete admixture was included in the mix. Sika® Control 40 is a shrinkage-reducing admixture used to produce high performance concrete with greatly reduced drying shrinkage.
Sika Solutions
The first area where Sika® Control 40 was used was in the base of large liquid storage tanks, where the concrete would be used to encapsulate the void and provide stabilisation. It was important to avoid concrete shrinkage and subsequent separation between the in-situ concrete and the internal sides of the tanks, thus preventing any migration of liquids between the two.
Sika® Control 40 was also used in the mix for a variety of concrete machinery bases, where the machine mounting plates were bedded into the concrete. Low shrinkage in the concrete was again required to retain the integrity of the plates. In total, CEMEX UK supplied 1000 cubic metres of low shrinkageconcrete to the project.
