NewPage Escanaba Mill to Produce Papers for Pressure Sensitive Label Industry

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NewPage Corp., Miamisburg, Ohio, USA, this week announced that the a 262-in. trim No. 3 paper machine at its Escanaba, Mich., mill will manufacture release liner and general purpose label papers for North American and International pressure sensitive markets.

"Based on customer feedback, market growth, and our long history of serving the pressure sensitive industry, we determined that Escanaba's No. 3 paper machine is an excellent manufacturing platform for meeting the stringent performance requirements of this market," said Ed Buehler, general manager for specialty papers. "This product line expansion creates more facestock and release liner options for label converters, and uniquely positions NewPage with the most comprehensive offering of pressure sensitive papers in North America."

The Escanaba mill is a fully integrated pulp and paper manufacturing facility with an annual capacity of 845,000 tons on three paper machines, producing label facestock and release liner, high-end commercial printing, catalog, magazine, and book grades. The Escanaba mill is third-party certified to three chain-of-custody systems, including the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) schemes.

NewPage is the largest coated paper manufacturer in North America, based on production capacity, with $3.1 billion in net sales for the year ended December 31, 2009. The company's product portfolio includes coated freesheet, coated groundwood, supercalendered, newsprint, and specialty papers. These papers are used for corporate collateral, commercial printing, magazines, catalogs, books, coupons, inserts, newspapers, packaging applications, and direct mail advertising. NewPage operates paper mills in Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Nova Scotia, Canada, with a total annual production capacity of approximately 4.4 million tons of paper, including 3.2 million tons of coated paper, 1.0 million tons of uncoated paper, and 200,000 tons of specialty paper.