Weyerhaeuser Idling Machine

Weyerhaeuser Co. officially idled one of its machines at its North Carolina paperboard mill. The company opted to take the machine off line at its Plymouth, N.C. due to the continued oversupply of finished product on the market. The machine has been offline for the past several months.

A spokesman for Weyerhaeuser reiterated that while the machine is temporarily down, the company expects to bring the machine back on line when markets for its finished product improve. “The No. 3 machine is being frozen indefinitely. We are adjusting production and inventory,” he said.

Several paper stock dealers in the area, however, feel the machine will be closed permanently, eliminating the machine all together as an end market for OCC.

The decision to take the machine off line is a big blow for many paper stock dealers in the Mid-Atlantic area. The mill had been one of the larger consumers of OCC from the region. A decision to take the machine off line has put additional downward pressure on the grade.

There are reports of a number of paper stock dealers have seen their orders cut off as the mill looks to balance out its intake with the new production levels.

The decision to take the machine off line continues a major push by many forest products companies to bring supply and demand back into balance. Over the past several months announcements of significant downtime have been cropping up for most all grades of paper and pulp.

The Plymouth operation will continue to run with one machine making paperboard, as well as other machines manufacturing pulp and fine printing and writing paper.