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Aylesford Newsprint's world record

On this day: 22 August 1996

Maxim helped tell the story of a Kent company securing a new world record.  

Aylesford Newsprint’s giant Paper Machine (PM14) successfully manufactured 1,448 miles of paper in 24 hours, beating the previous record held by two mills, one in Germany and one in Finland. 

The new record was the equivalent of a 9.2metre wide sheet of paper stretching from London to Athens. At that rate of production, the sheet of 100% recycled newsprint would have spanned the globe in just over a fortnight. 

PM14 was the centrepiece of a £250 million expansion at Aylesford, and produced 280,000 tonnes of premium quality newsprint per year. At 115 metres in length, the machine was longer than the pitch at Wembley. 

Aylesford Newsprint’s record may still stand, but unfortunately the company didn’t survive and closed in 2015 with the loss of 290 jobs, ending more than a century of papermaking on the site. 

However, the story has a happy ending, and the 90-acre former Aylesford Newsprint site is now home to Panattoni Park Aylesford, an industry leading logistics and distribution centre that’s home to 4,000 jobs and many global names – and it’s a project that Maxim is proud to have been involved with over the last four years. 


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