In speaking to what the mill's sale means for the NEXUS Industrial precinct, Cr van de Ven said it will "obviously have an impact".

"VISY need to go through the process of making the plant do what they want it to do, and they're starting with a clean sheet as far as employees and the plant is concerned when they take over," he said.

"Eventually I think over three to four years, you'll find more people employed at VISY than there are currently employed by Norske Skog.

"That's my personal opinion, and anecdotally that's what I've heard out in the marketplace."

Cr van de Ven said Norske Skog was among the original partners when planning began for NEXUS seven years ago, and with Overall Forge, were the only companies in the precinct at this stage.

"There's obviously some inquiries in the background ... we're looking in the next six or 12 months to have some really positive news around that," he said.

"We're going to finish up with 540 hectares of land that is ready for industrial development.

"We've been working very hard and we've already spent $12 million on this project to date and we're going to spend a lot more, because we know that the future for Albury and for jobs is this industrial land."

Longford Civil has now started work on a $5.06 million contract to undertake sewerage and connection works over about 30 weeks, and Cr van de Ven said this with the Davey Road interchange were "critical enabling infrastructure" to lure in businesses to NEXUS.

"I would expect within 12 months there would be sods turned to get that [Davey Road] project underway," he said.

"We've had a few stumbling blocks along the way.

"There's been some arguments [with government] around the discounting of jobs because some will go to Wodonga.

"But we've been arguing there shouldn't be any discounts and I think that's now recognised and the full value of NEXUS will be realised now that we've got all the infrastructure partners in place.

"It's great now to see the state and federal governments in sync to make this happen."

Cr van de Ven believed NEXUS hadn't lost out because of the delays to the project, while Logic at Wodonga is up and running.

"With the size of the blocks and the precinct, I think we're targeting a totally different marketplace to what Logic is; we're looking at really big companies that are bringing two to four hundred jobs at a time to this precinct," he said.

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"Whatever happens either side is fantastic for this area."

The NSW government is contributing $9.9 million and Albury MP Justin Clancy said that money was "ready for the project as it moves forward".

"We're working hard, pushing government to say it's one thing to actually have the site prepared and development, the other thing we want to work really hard on is easing the planning process," he said.

Mr Clancy said state and federal funding was key to the project getting off the ground.

"[We've been] trying to bring all the government levels together and we've finally got that," he said.