RIP Jay Maine Mill

[peakbagger]

Pixelle Specialty Solutions to Close Mill in Jay, Maine Q1 2023 | Business Wire  It was just a matter to time since the digester explosion. 

[Riwaka]

Is the wood going to end up as wood pellets for Europe? A sea port in Maine is about 2200 nautical miles closer to Europe than somewhere in the South like a Mississippi sea port for loading wood pellets.

[Southside]

Been a couple of attempts / false starts on bulk pellets, torrified wood, going to Europe via a shuttered Maine mill over the past decade or so.  I don't think so much as a bag has shipped yet. 

[thecfarm]

I have no idea how many are working there now.
Just saw on the news 230.
It's been going down for years.
I wonder what will go there now.

[711ac]

Just heard this on the radio news with my coffee. 
Sad news for Maine and the whole woods industry.
We have some terrible Gov't here and I think most of this can be laid at their feet. They hate business. 

[maineshops]

Yup ,we need to get "General Mills" out and get a business man in there.

[OntarioAl]

Join the club Kenora Fort Frances Thunder Bay (3 0f 4 gone) Red Rock Marathon Sault Ste Marie Iroquois Falls All these mills gone just foundation slabs left
Al

[nativewolf]

Life keeps changing, pulp mills didn't exist, then they did and sometime in the future they will hardly matter.  Change is the constant.  

Various governments around the world have tried to stave off closure of mills, in Maine they have been more successful than most so instead of complaining you should actually be thankful.  In MD the last mill closed, in Virginia there is one buyer/ mill operator.  

Government can't fight the market not in TN where that mill closed last year not in Maine, nor in Wi where the mills closed 2 years ago.  

[nativewolf]

Been a couple of attempts / false starts on bulk pellets, torrified wood, going to Europe via a shuttered Maine mill over the past decade or so.  I don't think so much as a bag has shipped yet.

They tried to get one of my clients to take  it and ship chips to the eu.  He got excited, went to see it, did numbers and say no thanks.  Lose money on every ship.  That whole business only exists because of a regulatory trick in eu.  It is under attack and I would not count on it as a business.  If they remove the green label from wood chips than Prices fall even more.  

[Firewoodjoe]

You guys are talking above my knowledge but why do they close mills in one state and build a new one here in Michigan? Maybe type of wood or easy of getting/selling. 🤷‍♂️ But we also lost three outlets in the past couple decades. Two big pulp mills. And a lot of co-gen plants. It's kind of a big circle that makes the world go round. 🤷‍♂️

[beenthere]

A few reasons I can think of.. but a mill is somewhat like an expensive piece of machinery.. when the maintenance gets to a point that buying new is necessary, it is done. New techniques in processing can make the decision to shut down an old factory in one place and move to another place.
Also, rules change the game whether it be for the process and air emissions or water discharge. Taxes likely also play a part as well as age of workforce which can increase costs due to workers' time in the job.
Likely many factors enter into closing a mill, and money is probably the bottom line as with most decisions.

[barbender]

We've lost 4 OSB plants, 3-4 paper mills, and I can't think of what else in the last 20 years. The high point in my life time fir the wood industry was the late 90's. Even fools were making good money, I think they were figuring at the time we were harvesting faster than the growth rate. Now we probably harvest 1/3 of that.

 Huber is a bright spot, they are laying ground work for a new OSB mill in Cohasset, MN. Of course there are environmentalists trying to tie it up in court, but I'm hopeful it will be a go. Huber manufactures the Advantech OSB that has the pre-applied moisture barrier, you just have to tape the seams. It has really taken the market by storm, I hope this mill goes through!

[beenthere]

I understand the Advantech OSB has moisture resistance so it will hold up better in moist conditions, than conventional OSB. 

Don't understand the "tape the seams" suggestion, and wonder what the application would be for this OSB product beyond being used for sheathing. 

[SwampDonkey]

Huber has been the one mill around these parts that hasn't been belly aching for some sort of bailout or on and off shutdowns and sales turnovers. They have a plant in Easton, Maine. Been there at least 35 years chugging along.

[peakbagger]

LP just rebuilt a plant in Northern Maine to make a new siding product that is in great demand. 

The Jay mill was a "state of the art" mill built to make coated paper. It was a very profitable grade as 40 years ago everyone got glossy magazines and advertisements. Unfortunately it was too profitable and too many mills got into coated paper all over the country. Some companies like Madison paper and Millinocket Maine spent lots of money to build machines to make a lower priced product that nibbled away at the market. Offshore competition also appeared. Then the internet came in and spoiled the show. Demand for coated started heading down and never came back. IP bought one of the competitors in Maine, Bucksport, and eventually shut them down. New Page bought Rumford who also was a coated producer after Mead stripped off the land and sold it. New Page was supposed to switch Rumford to some other grade than coated but never did, they sold the hydro electric plants and dumped what was left on another clueless owner who eventually sold it for near scrap value to the Chinese. Madison Papers and Millinocket shut down. IP in Jay also had a disastrous strike that branded the mill with a bad reputation that still exists today. IP saw the writing on the wall and after dumping their reimaging timberland, sold to hedge fund who ultimate sold the hydros and then sold what was left to Pixelle for cheap. Meanwhile a lot of the remaining printing went offshore so the companies who made the printing paper went offshore. Thus there was a glut of coated in the US market and no signs of it getting better.

Pixelle could make good pulp but when the digester blew up several years ago, they realized they had an uncompleted mill in need of very expensive repairs, reportedly for far more than they paid for the entire place. Even without the loss of the digester, it is likely the mill would have closed under their ownership.

Politicians including the former Maine governor may show up at the gate for a photo op but they cannot change the world market. East Millinocket went down under LePage's watch (it was going down under the prior governor, but LePage got the booby prize). The decline of the pulp & paper industry in Maine has been going on for at least 30 years and every governor's goal has been to hope another mill does not go down under their watch. Nine Dragons in Rumford is stumbling along with lots of plans but no follow through, it would be scrapped by now if not bought by a Chinese billionaire who is using it as a training ground for her family. All the plans that are floated in public to switch away from coated are plans that have been tried and failed elsewhere. Talk to any long term employee and they uniformly say, the new managers are clueless. Sappi is also a coated mill that has been desperately trying to get away from coated, they switched to grease resistant papers on some grades and unfortunately, they use PFOAs in the coating. The PFOA went to their treatment plant and the sludge was given away to farmers for soil amendments so tens of thousands of acres of farmland as well as the Kennebec River is now ground zero for PFOA contamination. At some point that is going to cost Sappi a bundle. That and issues with their water intakes on the Kennebec makes that mill a shaky proposition. 

The only positive potential for growth in the Maine fiber industry is that GoLab a Maine startup is rebuilding the Madison mill to make a wood fiber based insulation product called TimberHP. Its very popular in Europe for "green building" but it is not made in the US currently and not cost effective to ship (big bulky and low cost). They bought a used manufacturing line in Europe and moved it to Madison. It is a continuous product made 24/7. They are planning to go into production in early 2023 so it lines up with the Jay closure and is not that far away from Jay. My guess is that some of the folks at Jay will be applying to the new Madison mill. The tradeoff is most mills have been shrinking for years and the folks left are high on the seniority list so there are not a lot of young folks working at the mills. Rotating shift work is not easy and there are known health effects for working rotating shifts, many papermakers were born into it and are used to it so they are logical employees as most people not used to them would not stay long.    

        

[snowstorm]

I see someone doesn't like us pointing out the truth about the one behind the desk in Augusta. I hauled a lot of wood to jay over the years. When the I p opened it it was a steady market the worse thing up here was when verso bought it. They scraped Bucksport cause they didn't want anyone else to have it. Rumford the feds said they had to sell it. They would have to much of the market. That was sold to n d paper from china. They not only made a go of it but they are putting a lot of cash into it. Along with rumford they revived the old town mill. Now if one of them would raise the price of soft wood. That's a bit low while the hard wood is up there

[peakbagger]

I live in NH so I do not have a dog in that fight. Just explain to me how a politician in Maine can revive the coated paper market in the US that has been sinking for 30 years? 

[snowstorm]

She dose not help anything. And the jay mill was not making coated paper. 

[nativewolf]

I live in NH so I do not have a dog in that fight. Just explain to me how a politician in Maine can revive the coated paper market in the US that has been sinking for 30 years?

I don't have a dog in it either.  I'm all ears.  Glad to hear what we could do here in Virginia or MD or PA (just had a mill closed).

[Southside]

Ohh believe me I could pitch in with the politics of all this, as I got really, really, raked over the coals due to politics when Lincoln was resurrected from the dead the last time, but - Lets keep the politics out of it so this does not get moved into the restricted section. 

Personally I think the final nail in the coffin was the digester blowing up, same as when the recovery boiler blew at Lincoln.  I don't see a pulp and paper mill doing well as only a paper mill, way too many different logistics.  

[barbender]

 Coated paper is a rapidly shrinking, dying market. Our local UPM/Blandin mill manager's whole strategy was hopefully to be the last man standing in an evaporating market- which I thought they said they are the last North American coated paper producer at this point.

Typically, the involvement of politicians has made issues worse. When all 3 of the Ainsworth OSB mills closed down, 2 of them were purchased with government money by some dreamy headed community foundations or something like that. The one in Grand Rapids was going to be repurposed into a "green energy campus", if they only set up the facility where manufacturers could set up to make solar panels, wind turbines etc obviously they would flock to it. Haha, I think there are aspen trees growing in the access road behind the gates now. Oh yeah, these do gooders/meddlers purchased these mills from Ainsworth with no compete clauses, so now they can't be used to produce OSB. Perfect sites with rail service etc. 

 Beenthere, the Advantech product has the moisture barrier on it, the seams are taped to complete the air seal. It eliminates the use of Tyvek, or on a roof they have a roof specific product that has an integral membrane that replaces tarpaper or synthetic roofing paper. If you see a building going up with green OSB, that's Advantech.

[beenthere]

Thanks barbender
Do you have a link that tells about the green product that eliminates the Tyvek ?

[barbender]

Here ya go, BT-

https://www.huberwood.com/zip-system/wall-sheathing?gclid=Cj0KCQjw7KqZBhCBARIsAI-fTKIXcp_AsitAKGGTqEpJ-8whLJlcq78Yw6R_JtahopeMTbOZeRqqjGUaAo1GEALw_wcB

[barbender]

I was somewhat mistaken, Advantech is Huber's OSB product, and it is called Zip system when it has the moisture membrane on it.

[nativewolf]

Yep govt interventions at a very site specific sort of level do more harm than good.  No matter the best intentions the politicians are fighting something the market is trying to fix.  

Govt interventions that do work are usually incentive based, tax credits, or crop specific subsidy to encourage  production of an industry (corn and methanol) where the govt subsidizes refineries for buying ethanol and the requires then to mix it.  It worked (millions of acres of corn getting turned into ethanol) and brought some industry into farm belts but the unintended consequence is that it hurt frackers.  

I don't think there's much we can do on the coated paper side of things other than tarrif up coated paper printed products coming from China.   That might do some good as the chinese govt is subsidizing that activity like crazy.  I think it would just be a blip though, coated paper is disappearing in daily life.  

Much easier for the govt to create a new market (computer chips, cell phones, solar production, ev's etc) than try to save a dying industry.  Wood fiber insulation strikes me as a potential huge win and the govt could offer incentives to support that (building codes to require more insulation for one), credits for "green" insulation for another.

[beenthere]

Thanks bb
Knew of GP's similar product ForceField with the added moisture barrier. Similar appears to the Huberwood Zip System. 
Have yet to see a green building using it tho. Will be on the lookout. 

[peakbagger]

One thing that I havent seen is if Pixelle is willing to sell the mill with no restrictions? Old Town was sold as scrap with no restrictions; thus Nine Dragons could restart it. Fraser didnt put restrictions on the deed but sold to a scrapper who tore most of it down. I think Madison had restrictions on the deed. Millinocket was mostly scrapped by the last owner. East Millinocket went bankrupt and was mostly whole but the town ended up with it and scrapped the papermachines. Bucksport was scrapped. 

[Mooseherder]

Maybe this has been mentioned before and I missed it.  Seems like cardboard mills should have popped up from all the home shipments going on to replace paper mills.  Retooling a building is doable. Those vans are running the highways full of boxes. 

[Firewoodjoe]

Our pulp mills are wide open and even lowered there spec. We are fortunate to have osb and brown paper mills. Unfortunately anything to do with magazines or computer paper was prolly a bad move years ago. 

[BurkettvilleBob]

The Jay closure is obviously terrible for those that are working there, but  I haven't sent any wood there since the digester failed. I'll be curious to see what the operation in Madison does for markets. I had initially heard they were hoping to largely use others by products for chips, but have recently heard of contracts with larger logging outfits.

[Ed_K]

 Things could change if Putin doesn't start that pipe line supplying Europe. The pipe line shut down for maintainance, but if the war keeps going the people in Europe may be looking for more pellets than the 860k tonns their getting now. Maybe firewood  ;D :D.

[peakbagger]

Maybe this has been mentioned before and I missed it.  Seems like cardboard mills should have popped up from all the home shipments going on to replace paper mills.  Retooling a building is doable. Those vans are running the highways full of boxes.

Most of the corrugated packaging is made with recycled fiber and its costly to ship old cardboard so the mills tend to be close to the source. The owner of the Patriots owns several corrugated mills located right near big cities which reduces the cost to haul recycled fiber around. The waste cardboard has a lot of junk along with it, like plastic tape. I spent a bit of time at their plant in CT and at least half of what came in ended up getting hauled off to a landfill. For some reason they got a lot of golf balls mixed in with the recycled fiber. Years ago Bowater built a large, recycled fiber plant at East Millinocket and figured out that hauling all the recycled material up to East Millinocket didnt make sense. Sad to say, but Jay is just to far out in the woods to do anything recycled. The Chinese have talked about it in Rumford and Old Town but I don't see it happening with high fuel prices. 

[SwampDonkey]

Irving's Lake Utopia mill uses recycled cardboard. Amazing the amount of cardboard that goes in the recycle bin every month around here. I can imagine there is a lot of plastic tape in it, besides the sticker labels.

[peakbagger]

I saw a display of stuff that came in with the fiber at the recycled mil in East Millinocket Maine years ago. They had their "first dollar" in a display case, a crumbled up bill that had come out of a rejects screen. They didnt keep track of spare change but reportedly the employees knew where the change would come out in the process. No doubt jewelry would also show up. They also had bigger stuff like small engines, car batteries, starters, alternators and all sorts of electronics and other junk that had gotten rejected. The Kraft's actually ran recycling centers for large cities near their corrugated mill in CT in order to improve the quality of the recycled material sent to the mill.  

One of the issues with recycled fiber is that it breaks down and gets weaker every time its reused. Coated paper has to be made quite strong to run through high speed printing presses so the underlying fiber is a fir/spruce kraft pulp (Kraft is strong in German). Glossy magazine paper was in great demand for recycling. The mill I worked for in Wisconsin recycled a lot of magazines. Apparently, a lot of magazines were printed and sent from the midwest to speed delivery and reduce postage. There is a lot of waste at a printing plant and we bought the scrap in bales, so we got a lot of glossy magazines including the raunchiest porn out there. When the plant gave tours, they made sure to keep the visitors away from the bales of magazines in the warehouse. The Ridgid tool calendars were printed nearby so folks would dig through the bales and try to collect the pages from the newest edition before it was sent.    

[thecfarm]

I am seeing the Jay mill on trailers heading to somewhere.
I am seeing contractors coming in for nuts and bolts to put things together for shipping.  :(
I was talking to one of the contractors. 
He helped built a paper mill out of state, Indiana? Then many years later, he helped tear it down.

[peakbagger]

Hope I didnt miss anyone else's post of this but kind of nice to say Nevermind with respect to the former IP/Verso/Pixelle pulp and paper mill is going to be converted to a new Oriented Strand Board Mill (OSB) by a relative "local".

Godfrey Forest Products Announces New OSB Mill For Maine | Panel World (panelworldmag.com)

A nice fit and good news for the region. The former Madison Maine papermill,TImber HP, just up the road and also a "local" ownership, conversion to making cellulose based insulation seems to be doing well.  They are running late on the solid board product but given the timing of the project running through Covid and starting from near scratch its pretty impressive.

In both cases they are supplying to more regional market in products that are not readily shipped around the world due to shipping costs. The only problem is if they are too successful, other players will try to rush into the market and flood it like papermills were somewhat infamous on doing. It will be interesting if the Canadians try to jump in as the Eastern provinces have a lot of similar former pulp and papermill sites.

The western maine wood products industry seems to be picking back up, although Rumford is still a big unknown, but Eastern Maine is still looking for a savior. The biomass to jet fuel project plans sound nice at Limestone but to date is lot of smoke and mirrors, currently the delay is blamed on PFAS's, at best its 5 years out. The wood to a heating oil replacement project, levulinic acid,  at Lincoln seems to be dead in the water and as usual both East Millinocket and Millinocket still are vacant. 

The big issue these days in Maine is workforce, reportedly there are 9 jobs open for every worker. The stats are lopsided due the high housing costs along the coast and booming economy but some of that strength is heading north to some extent. 

[thecfarm]

I think the build will take a couple years.
Wonder what type of wood will be used?

[peakbagger]

I always thought it was a mix of various softwoods and various Aspen varieties?. The big issue with OSB plants used to be VOC emissions from the wood drying and the glue setting. The plants need to collect all the exhausts from the plant and run them through regenerative thermal oxidizers to clean it up before it goes in the air. 

OSB was regarded by many as cheap alternative to "real plywood" but seems to have taken over in energy efficient construction. I think the glue formulations have changed a lot over the years. 

[Mooseherder]

The advantech sub flooring mentions you have up to 300 days to cover from weather.  Most builders would have it covered in a couple of days or by evening.  I'm not a big fan of osb either but it was fast and easy. Except for the lifting part. They want you to leave a 1/8 gap in between tongue and groove panels.  Wierd eh, considering the amount of glue in the panels. 

[Southside]

The biomass to jet fuel project plans sound nice at Limestone but to date is lot of smoke and mirrors, currently the delay is blamed on PFAS's, at best its 5 years out.

They tried that scam in Lakeview, OR under the name Red Rock.  Left a $300 million bond mess behind - of course it was all bond and grant money so who really cares right?  Sugar beets, Flax, now jet fuel - history repeats itself in my old stomping ground.  

[SwampDonkey]

They closed up an OSB plant in St Stephen, NB back in 2019. There's one in Miramachi City, NB still operating under the name Arbec. The source of all the OSB that went into my house. Most every lumber and sheathing place has Arbec product around here. You can't get nice spruce plywood at all around here, barely one good side. Full of young plantation grown knot wood.  And they want a fortune for it. Priced like high dollar birch plywood was 15 years ago.

[Bruno of NH]

Advantec is the real deal 
They stand by the warranty 
I used many sheet when I was building. 

[Riwaka]

Roseburg in Missoula, Montana due to close in May, 2024 dues to shift away from particleboard.

https://nbcmontana.com/amp/news/local/roseburg-forest-products-in-missoula-set-to-close

Drone flyover for site sawdust inventory.
https://youtu.be/XNXQuYPEoGU?si=lDfi5HiSRZEwulSi

[maple flats]

I may be all wet, but I often wonder if, when mills close but there is still a need for their product, can simply be because of the shipping cost. 
The bulk of the  forests close enough have been harvested. Thus farther away forests attract an investment in a new mill and things simply shift to be closer to a forest resource. Available energy can also be a major factor. To power a mill takes huge amounts of power, anywhere from electric, to water  being the bigger ones. 
As I say, I may be all wet, but there may be some truth in this theory.

[Magicman]

Also consider that some of these older sawmills may require more maintenance and may also not be up to date with the latest technology production wise.  They may also require a labor force that may not be available.

[Ianab]

Available energy can also be a major factor. To power a mill takes huge amounts of power,

A lot of the larger mills run a co-gen electric plant. They have waste wood / sawdust / bark for fuel, and already need steam for the drying kiln. The electric system needs to be in place anyway, so all they really have to add is a steam turbine generator. They can even sell power back to the grid if they are generating more than the mill site needs. 

[SwampDonkey]

Some mills have a buy back scheme on power rates. Sell power higher to a government utility and buy back cheaper. That is common.

[thecfarm]

I live no more then 15 minutes from the Jay mill. There is plenty of wood close by. 
I do know they generate power, there are at least 3 falls for power. But have no idea if that is a closing factor.
That mill was built back in the older 60's, it's an old mill in today times.
I think they are like any company, if it can be done cheaper at another mill, it is sent there to be made.