Kimberly-Clark Australia sold the site of its former Tantanoola Pulp Mill for $1.43m according to a recent consultants’ report tabled at a Wattle Range Council meeting.

Measuring 37 hectares, the property changed hands between 2019 and last year.

The largely-cleared site retained a few buildings and hard stand and is now used by Roundwood Solutions as a timber treatment plant.

State Parliament was told several years ago the mill site was earmarked for intensive horticulture but these plans did not come to fruition.

The Tantanoola Pulp Mill closed on November 18, 2011 and 65 Kimberly-Clark employees and 12 permanent contractors lost their jobs at this site.

KCA had spent much of 2011 in commercial discussions to try to find a buyer to operate Tantanoola as a pulp mill but those efforts were unsuccessful.

The company had cited pressures of the Australian dollar and fluctuations in the financial market for the closure and the Tantanoola plant had also been considered to be too small on a global scale.

Its annual capacity of 70,000 tonnes was considered small by world pulp mill standards.

The Tantanoola mill was built between 1990 and 1992 at a cost of $215m.

In the following two decades, seven figure sums had also been spent by KCA at Tantanoola on such matters as the woodyard and the pitch extraction project.

McMahon Services had the main contract to clear the site in 2012 which included the spectacular demolition with explosives of the landmark tower which stood six stories high.

Tantanoola was one of five manufacturing facilities to be closed by KCA in the last 20 years.

Its sole manufacturing site nowadays is the adjacent Millicent mill where imported pulp is transformed into tissue and paper products by 400 company employees and contractors.

Company management stated last week that 50% of them live in Millicent and surrounds.

Others live further afield as far as Robe which is almost 100km from the plant.