NewPage to Close Whiting Mill

NewPage Corp., Miamisburg, Ohio, USA, announced this week that it will close its Whiting, Wis., mill at the end of February 2011. The Whiting mill currently operates two paper machines that produce approximately 250,000 tpy of coated paper used by the publishing and printing industry, with a primary focus on mail-order catalog, magazine, and retailer end uses.

"This remains a difficult time for the paper industry, for NewPage, and for many of our customers," said George Martin, NewPage president and CEO. "While we have seen modest recovery in our coated markets, we continue to monitor the supply and demand balance and make the difficult choices needed to avoid oversupplying those markets. NewPage has the capacity and operational flexibility to produce both coated groundwood and coated freesheet on the same machines at other facilities. Therefore, we do not expect any interruptions in service to our customers while closing the Whiting mill, which is our highest cost-per-ton coated groundwood mill."

Approximately 360 employees will be affected by the shutdown of the Whiting mill.

TAPPI
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