Norske Skog Boyer Mill Heat Recovery Project

Norske Skog Boyer Mill Heat Recovery Project is an industrial electricity and fuel efficiency project located at the Boyer Mill [14], approximately 36km northwest of Hobart and near the town of New Norfolk in Tasmania [13]. It was registered in June 2016 and operates within the 600ha industrial site [9].

Industrial electricity and fuel efficiency projects involve improving energy or fuel efficiency by modifying, installing, removing, or replacing equipment that affects the energy consumption of existing operations [2]. This project specifically focuses on optimizing process heat and capturing waste heat for re-use within the mill's operational circuit [2].

The surrounding Derwent Valley area is known for historically significant hop farming, broadacre cropping, and forestry operations [4, 5]. The region experiences a cool-temperate climate with 500mm to 700mm of annual rainfall [8], and soils in the area are generally chromosols with a sand over clay texture, alongside fertile basalt and alluvial clay loams in the valley flats [4, 6].

The Boyer Mill was established in 1941 as the first facility in the world to produce newsprint from hardwood and remains Australia's sole manufacturer of newsprint and magazine-grade paper [13, 14, 17]. The carbon project was contracted in November 2016 under contract CAC988641 to deliver 250,000 Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) to the Commonwealth, but the contract was terminated in November 2025 after delivering roughly 134,000 units [4, 6]. In February 2025, Norske Skog sold the historic mill to the Australian-owned Boyer Corporation [14].