Woodland Pulp to Install Two New Tissue Machines
Print this Article | Send to Colleague
Woodland Pulp, Baileyville, Maine., USA, will expand its pulp mill in Baileyville into tissue production with the addition of two tissue machines, adding 80 new jobs to the operation. The two tissue machines will involve a capital investment of about $120 million, but the machine manufacturers have not yet been announced. They will be operated by St. Croix Tissue Inc., Augusta, Maine, an affiliate of Woodland Pulp. Tissue will be made from pulp supplied by Woodland Pulp, and the new machines will each produce 60,000 metric tpy of tissue.
The first tissue machine is expected to be operating in the fourth quarter of 2015, with the second coming online in the first quarter of 2016.
The mill, located next to the St. Croix River on the Canadian border, currently employs about 320 people. In addition to creating 80 jobs, the investment is expected to lead to an estimated 200-300 indirect jobs, according to state officials.
The Woodland Pulp mill was acquired from Domtar, Montreal, Que., Canada, by International Grand Investment Corp. for $64 million in 2010. IGC, a Delaware-registered corporation, is part of a Chinese-based holding company that represents international investors in pulp trade and imports. Built in 1906, the mill had been owned by a number of paper companies before the 2010 sale.
The mill, which had been owned by Domtar since 2001, is 100% energy self-sufficient and has its own hydroelectric facility. It has an annual production capacity of 395,000 metric tons of pulp. IGC annually brokers more than 800,000 metric tons of pulp.
Declining paper markets forced the closure of the mill’s only paper machine in 2007, but pulp production continued at the facility. A six-week shutdown of the mill in 2009 was blamed on the global recession.
