Georgia-Pacific Tissue Mill in Muskogee, OK, Back up after May 13 Ffire

Georgia-Pacific (GP) restarted production at its recycled-content tissue paper mill and converting operation in Muskogee, OK, in early June, an official told PPI Pulp & Paper Week on June 13. The mill had shut down May 13 after a forklift explosion and major fire damaged two converting and parent roll storage buildings.

None of the mill's employees was hurt in the accident.

The official said he could not provide a specific restart date "because it wasn't a matter of everything restarting at once."

"The mill managed a safe and effective restart of various lines over several days and continues to ramp up production," the contact added.

Startup was also delayed by severe rain and flooding in the area over recent weeks. The Muskogee mill has five paper machines with capacity of 352,700 tpy of tissue paper and consumes an estimated 435,000 tpy of recovered paper, according to a PPI Pulp & Paper Week estimate. Some converting operations resumed later in May.

With an estimated 28 days of paper machine downtime as of the start of this week, the mill may have lost about 27,000 tons of tissue production.

The mill employs about 750 workers.

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