Fortress Paper Completes Acquisition of Optical Security Assets, PM 1 Rebuild at Landqart

Fortress Paper Ltd., Vancouver, B.C., USA, reports that it has successfully completed the acquisition of Bank of Canada's Optical Security Material (OSM) division that produces optically variable material for security threads contained in various banknotes, including Canadian banknotes. The company also reports that it has completed the rebuild of Paper Machine No. 1 at its Landqart Mill in Switzerland, previously announced in January 2010, materially on budget. Rebuilt PM 1 is currently in the paper production testing phase.

The OSM Assets acquired by Fortress include certain patent applications and intellectual property rights to optical security features, unique security applications, and substantially all of the production equipment and machinery currently used at the OSM division.

PM1 was rebuilt into a banknote and security papers machine. Prior to the rebuild, it produced specialty papers and low to medium security papers. The rebuild is expected to increase the company's aggregate banknote and high security papers production capacity from the current 2,500 metric tpy to approximately 10,000 metric tpy.

Fortress Paper operates three mills, the Landqart mill, the Dresden mill in Germany, and the Fortress Specialty Cellulose mill in Quebec, Canada.

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