Zanders closes for good after 200 years

The fallout from the worst year in print’s history continues, with the iconic Zanders paper mill closing, for good, just shy of 200 years after it started operations, with its owners laying the blame on Covid.

Located just outside Cologne, the papermaker was best-known for its high-gloss, cast-coated Chromolux range of paper, label papers, and board.

The mill said it had seen “a significant decline” in its papers during Covid. It went into administration two months ago. It has had a troubled few years, ever since Metso Board sold it six years ago.

It was founded in 1828, with the Chromaluyx brand introduced back in 1958. It also had a series of papers under its Zan- brand. Neither of the big paper merchants here has supplied Zanders in recent years.

It manufactured 325,000 tonnes of papers a year from its two papermaking machines. PM2 is 3.2m-wide system manufacturing grammages from 80-350gsm, with the jumbo sized PM3 a 6.6m-widemachine used for making 35-160gsm papers.

The Zanders site also has seven cast coaters, and can triple-coat on both sides of the sheet. It had five reel slitting machines, and eight sheeting machines.

The closure comes two weeks after Stora Enso announced it was closing two massive mills, one in Sweden and one in Finland, taking 1.36 million tonnes of fine papermaking capacity out of the market.