New AFH Tissue Mill Planned for Solvay, N.Y.

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Empire Tissue Co., a privately-held startup company based in Rhinebeck, N.Y., USA, is moving forward with plans to build a new, $125 million, 70,000 metric tpy tissue mill in the Village of Solvay, N.Y. The new mill, to be constructed on a "brownfield," 67-acre site will produce tissue, toweling, and napkin parent rolls for the away-from-home industrial tissue market, using 100% recycled fiber. It will employ some 300 workers during construction and have 82 permanent employees after startup, according to Jim Austin, Empire's founder and president.

O'Brien & Gere, Syracuse, N.Y., which has been selected to provide support for siting, financing, engineering, and construction of the new mill, reports that initial site remediation and project permitting approval are scheduled to be complete by this June. Financial closing is expected in the third quarter of this year, followed by a construction time of 18 - 24 months. Startup is planned for mid-2012, with full capacity being reached by the end of that year.

Empire is reportedly now concluding purchase arrangements for the site, a previous Allied Chemical waste bed operation being acquired from Honeywell International (Honeywell merged with Allied in 1999). According to a news report by The Post Standard in Syracuse, N.Y., Honeywell will pay for cleaning up the property as part of the sales agreement.

The mill's 75,000 metric tpy capacity is roughly equivalent to 1% of the U.S. AFH market. Its parent rolls will be sold to converters for processing into industrial, commercial, and retail sized products required by janitorial service providers, factories, schools, office buildings, and restaurants throughout the region. Austin points out that the mill will be within same-day truck transport distance of approximately one hundred million people residing in the northeastern/mid-Atlantic regional tissue market.