Maine tissue factory given new lease of life

When talking about the rebirth of the St Croix Tissue paper factory, Collin Scott Beal, who has worked at the mill for 38 years, still feels emotional.

"When we were shut down in 2009, we were very doubtful if we had a future, and we were skeptical we'd be able to get back up and running," Beal said.

"The investment from International Grand Investment has been the game changer," he said.

In 2010, Hong Kong-based, Delaware-incorporated International Grand Investment Corp, or IGIC, acquired the mill and injected $180 million into it.

Beal now works at St Croix Tissue and its parent company Woodland Pulp LLC as an environmental and security manager.

Located in Baileyville, Maine, the United States, St Croix Tissue was a bright spot in the small town for almost a century after it began making paper in 1906. Founded by the owners of The Boston Globe, the mill produced newsprint for the newspaper until the 1960s.

In 1963, the mill was purchased by Georgia-Pacific and over the years converted from newsprint into fine paper. In 2001, the mill was resold again to Canadian paper company Domtar Corp. As fine paper faced a market decline, Domtar closed the mill in 2007, ending 100 years of papermaking.

In the late 1980s, there were 1,200 people working in the pulp, paper, and oriented strand board plants in the area. By 2009, there were about 320 people left working at the pulp mill.

When IGIC stepped in 2010, it had the idea of maximizing returns by increasing the factory's tissue-making capacity. IGIC turned the facility around by converting it from a commodity producer into a value-added facility.

The measures included reducing dependence on oil by installing a pipeline and converting the mill to natural gas in 2011.

In 2016, IGIC invested another $120 million into two new tissue manufacturing machines. The expansion included the making of paper towels, as well as facial and other tissues.

John Williams, president of the Maine Pulp and Paper Association, said that in today's digital age, demand for most grades of paper products continues to drop. However, there is steadily rising demand for toilet and tissue paper that comes with population growth, he said.

"In an industry where most grades of paper are facing slack demand, tissues are one of the few specialties where sales are actually climbing," Williams said.

IGIC's investment has resulted in more than 80 new jobs at the mill and hundreds of indirectly created jobs. With the expansion of production, that figure continues to grow.

Marco L'Italien, vice-president for US East Operations at IGIC, said the high-technology nature of the machines offers a new spin on traditional mill jobs. The employees operate together as part of a high-performance work team, across every position from maintenance to process engineer.

As part of the new market grant money the company received, 60 percent of the new hires were low income earners. Jobs at the mill pay between $18 and $35 per hour. Women make up 30 percent of the workforce.

The giant machines produce tissue rolls that weigh 2.5 metric tons, and the mill can produce 125 rolls a day. All of the tissue produced in Baileyville is trucked to conversion facilities for finishing in the northeast US and Atlantic Canada, and some as far away as California. There, it is turned into paper towels, facial tissues and other consumer paper products.

"(St. Croix Tissue) is bringing back what Maine was very, very strong in - the paper industry," said Maine Governor Paul LePage. "We've suffered from a lack of technology investment and they're bringing in some of the newest technology."