Bowater Inc. will slash 500 jobs and sell 240,000 acres of timberland, in a round of cost cuts aimed at grappling with weak demand for newsprint and pulp.
The moves are expected to cut the company's annual costs by $75 million and permanently remove about 100,000 metric tons of annual newsprint capacity next year.
The job cuts will immediately cut costs by $11 million annually and will account for more than half the company's projected cost savings for next year.
The company will also close a paper machine in the second quarter of next year and sell four sawmills in Quebec. It has already "indefinitely" closed a fifth Quebec sawmill.
The paper machine closing -- which will result in an asset impairment charge of about $25 million -- combined with a lightweight coated papers machine conversion in Catawba, S.C., will remove 340,000 metric tons of newsprint capacity.
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