St. Mary's Paper - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

St. Marys Paper Ltd. is a manufacturer of pulp and paper, with its mill located in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

Sault Ste. Marie is a city on the St. Marys River in Algoma District, Ontario, Canada. It is the third largest city in Northern Ontario, after Sudbury and Thunder Bay, with a population of 74,948. The community was founded as a French religious mission: Sault either means "jump" or "rapids" in...

, Canada. The mill is situated on the St. Marys River

St. Marys River (Michigan-Ontario)

The St. Marys River , sometimes written as the St. Mary's River, drains Lake Superior, starting at the end of Whitefish Bay and flowing 74.5 miles southeast into Lake Huron, with a fall of ....

waterfront, just east of Essar Steel Algoma.

History

At one time it was an Abitibi

Abitibi-Consolidated

Abitibi Consolidated Inc. was a Canadian pulp and paper company based in Montreal, Quebec. Abitibi-Consolidated was formed from the merger of Abitibi-Price Inc. and Stone Consolidated Corp...

mill, used for research and development, but was sold to a private investor, Dan Alexander

Dan Alexander

Robert Daniel Alexander was a tackle and guard who played thirteen seasons in the National Football League for the New York Jets. Dan was draft from Louisiana State University in the 8th round of the 1977 NFL draft....

, who invested heavily in a new paper machine (#5). The company went bankrupt and was operated for several years by Ernst & Young

Ernst & Young

Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers ....

. A private investor, Ron Stern, of Belgravia Investments, purchased the mill and made the facility viable with the assistance of the employees, the Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

government and the Toronto-Dominion Bank

Toronto-Dominion Bank

The Toronto-Dominion Bank , is the second-largest bank in Canada by market capitalization and based on assets. It is also the sixth largest bank in North America. Commonly known as TD and operating as TD Bank Group, the bank was created in 1955 through the merger of the Bank of Toronto and the...

.

The mill is now a major employer in Sault Ste. Marie

Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

. However in 2004 and in late 2005 due to the country's hardships with the forestry industry, many mills have been forced to close and lay off employees. This was the case with St. Mary's Paper which on December 14, 2005 announced it was laying off an additional 14 employees. In 2004 the mill laid off 50 employees to help with cost cutting initiatives.

In the year 2006, the mill operated with 380 employees. Furthermore, in 2006 the company announced a 20% reduction in pay for employees due to the forest industry's rising energy costs and lack of government support for the forestry industry in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. The company indicated that the pay reduction was intended to help avoid further layoffs and keep the Sault Ste. Marie paper mill in operation unlike many other mills across Ontario and Canada which had been forced to close during this timeframe.

On October 25, 2006, St. Mary's Paper announced that it filed under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) in Toronto. The mill was seeking protection due to bankruptcy and indicated its confidence that the operation could be restructured. St. Mary's Paper cited the high Canadian dollar and rising energy costs for its declaration of bankruptcy. The legislation that the company has filed under is the same legislation that Algoma Steel

Algoma Steel

See also Algoma Essar Steel Algoma is an integrated primary steel producer located on the St. Marys River in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada. Its products are sold in Canada and the United States as well as overseas. Algoma Steel was founded in 1902 by Francis Clergue, an American entrepreneur...

, a neighbouring manufacturer located in the same municipality, filed under in 2001. The mill continued operations and supply to its customers at the time of filing.

On February 19, 2007, Sault Ste. Marie City Council reported that they would forgive St. Mary's Paper's $386,000 in municipal taxes that were owing. St. Mary's wanted to have a much larger amount forgiven but Council advised that it was the best they could do. The agreement was conditional based upon St. Mary's ability to reach an arrangement with their unions by 20. February 2007 and continuing operations in Sault Ste. Marie.

No agreement was reached between St. Mary's Paper management in time and, consequently, in April 2007, the mill was completely shut down. The shut down caused the loss of an estimated 400 jobs in the community and was expected to have a negative impact on the city's economy.

However, in June 2007 the mill was reopened under new ownership and began making paper again for its customers in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. The mill called back 195 workers of its original workforce of 380 people to restart operations on paper machine No.5. Paper machines numbers 3 and 4 were intended to come back online by August 2007. This was inntended to cause the recall of most of the remaining workers who had not yet returned. The news of the mill's reopening was welcomed by the community.

On August 8, 2007, St. Mary's announced that all 3 paper machines were back online and almost all of the laid off workers had returned. Announcements were also made about the building of the cogeneration

Cogeneration

Cogeneration is the use of a heat engine or a power station to simultaneously generate both electricity and useful heat....

plant to help curb electricity costs for the mill. A joint venture with Essar Steel Algoma on this project was being considered to save on building costs.

St. Mary's Paper's mill is insured by FM Global

FM Global

FM Global is a U.S.-based insurance company, with offices worldwide, that specializes in loss prevention services primarily to large corporations throughout the world in the Highly Protected Risk property insurance market sector. "FM Global" is the communicative name of the company, whereas the...

.

On December 9, 2010 it was announced that St. Marys Paper is expected to be back in business this week, nine months after the mill suspended operations and sent 300 out of work.
President Gord Acton confirmed the mill's workhorse paper machine No. 5 will "absolutely" be reactivated as early as today.
"We're grinding wood, pulp, wood's in the yard, paper will be on the reel tomorrow or Friday," Acton said in a brief phone interview from his legal firm.
He said officials were in the midst of drawing down financing Wednesday and new chief executive officer Dennis Bunnell was in Chicago talking to clients, "so we're just going crazy here."
Bunnell, who was brought on board in July from Munksjo Paper in Massachusetts, has a history of re-starting out-of-service mills. His resume includes Newton Falls Fine Paper in New York state, which reopened in 2007 after being out of service for seven years.
Acton said they could provide more information in the coming days, but said nearly all 200 workers who were laid off in March when No. 5 was idled will be recalled.

Products manufactured

This mill produces SCA premium, SCA and SCB paper grades under the trade names Sequence, Sequel and Synpress. Paper produced at the mill is primarily purchased by magazine publishers and large retail companies for high quality advertising

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

inserts, flyer

Flyer (pamphlet)

__notoc__A flyer or flier, also called a circular, handbill or leaflet, is a form of paper advertisement intended for wide distribution and typically posted or distributed in public place....

s and catalogues.

Process

St. Mary's Paper operates a 240,000 tons per year paper mill. It is a supercalendar grade paper mill

Paper mill

A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp, old rags and other ingredients using a Fourdrinier machine or other type of paper machine.- History :...

with three paper machines. Calendar and supercalendar processes are described here.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.