Verso Paper and NewPage Holdings have announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Verso will acquire NewPage in a transaction valued at $1.4 billion. Upon closing of the transaction, the combined company will have sales of approximately $4.5 billion and 11 manufacturing facilities located in six states.
RUMFORD, ME—NewPage is indefinitely shutting down a coated paper machine at its mill here, which will cause the company to lay off 120 of its 830 employees in February, the Sun Journal reported. The move is being attributed to the continued year-over-year decline of coated shipments and significant increases in imports from Western Europe.
NewPage said Tuesday it would shut down a paper machine "indefinitely" at the local mill (in Rumford, ME) in mid-February because of tough economic conditions.
About 120 workers would be laid off, Local 900 President Ron Hemingway said. The mill employs 830 people. Mill spokesman Anthony Lyons said the employees were informed Tuesday morning of the shutdown of the mill's No. 12 paper machine.
He said the company needs until mid-February to fill its ongoing customer orders, "and so we can transition the grades from the No. 12 paper machine to other machines at different NewPage machines at the Rumford paper mill
Government funding for the Port Hawkesbury Paper mill in Canada violated free trade laws, a U.S. congressman says.
NewPage shut the plant down in 2011, citing economic conditions. It left 1,000 people out of work. The province eventually stepped in to help it re-open under a different owner.
Nova Scotia spent $124 million to do so. Maine Congressman Michael Michaud complained that violated free-trade law. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has begun an investigation.
NewPage signed an agreement with Omya, a producer of minerals and pigments, to build a precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) plant at the Escanaba, MI mill site.
NewPage says the new on-site PCC plant has yet another benefit; it will use carbon dioxide generated at the paper mill in the process of making PCC, which reduces the environmental impact and carbon waste of the paper mill.
On top of all that good news, the plant will create seven local jobs.
The presses are good. The substrates are good. The software is good. And, as Cathy Cartolano, VP of sales and technical services at Mitsubishi Imaging (MPM), says, image quality is "scary close" to offset. So why doesn't continuous-feed inkjet dominate the market?
NewPage paper company will temporarily lay off about 120 hourly maintenance workers (at its Rumford, ME mill) next week, mill spokesman Anthony Lyons said Tuesday.
A couple of years ago, the company idled some of its paper machines at Rumford Paper, temporarily laying off between 50 and 300 workers.
The latest layoffs come four months after NewPage cut 5 percent of its workforce nationwide. The cuts resulted in nearly four dozen mill workers from the Rumford mill losing their jobs.
NewPage, Erco Worldwide and Wisconsin Rapids hazardous materials teams, worked together Thursday to handle a small chlorine leak at NewPage’s Wisconsin Rapids paper mill.
“It’s not a threat to the community; it’s no threat to the employees,” said Cliff Bowers, NewPage spokesman, shortly before personnel capped the leak just after 3 p.m. “It was managed in an appropriate and practiced fashion.”
A one-ton cylinder at the mill had a faulty valve, Wisconsin Rapids Deputy Fire Chief Scott Young said. “We put a spill kit over the valve to contain the leak, and we ventilated the room,” Young said.
After finally emerging from bankruptcy protection, with a much lighter debt load, NewPage Corp. clearly has merger on its mind. Why else would North America’s largest maker of coated paper choose as its chairman Mark A. Angelson, the U.S. printing industry’s Great Consolidator?
Further consolidation of the paper industry is inevitable, but could Angelson & Co. have something more radical in mind? Like maybe a marriage with a printing company? Like maybe Quad/Graphics, the continent’s #2 printer?
The idea that the two Wisconsin-centric companies are natural allies has been around for years. Quad...proposed an unusual alliance with a NewPage predecessor
NewPage Corp. has successfully completed its financial restructuring and has officially emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection pursuant to its Modified Fourth Amended Chapter 11 Plan confirmed by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware in Wilmington.
