Paper Mill Expects Renovation Completion This Month

Great Northern Paper expects to have its $100 million paper machine rebuild project at its Millinocket, Maine, mill completed by Nov. 26. The completion will end a 42-day modernization shutdown which began Oct. 15.

The company also ended a two-week production shutdown earlier this week. The company attributed the earlier shutdown to a lack of orders due to a slow economy.

Great Northern is spending $150 million to modernize the Millinocket paper mill. The project will allow the company to switch from commodity paper grades to higher value specialty grades.

Two-thirds of the investments are to rebuild the mill's largest paper machine, marking the first significant capital investments in 30 years at the century-old paper mill, which employees about 700 people.

The company has no plans to shut down the three old paper machines, but the market for papers produced by those machines was very dependent on the overall health of the economy. The three older paper machines produce coated and uncoated specialty grades of paper.

The newly rebuilt paper machine will produce more paper, from 3,000 feet per minute to 3,300 fpm, which will increase production by an additional 60,000 to 70,000 tons a year.