Operations GM says firm in serious talks to sell defunct mill properties

B5

DAVID SHIPLEY
Telegraph-Journal

Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

Speak Up

FREDERICTON - An executive with UPM-Kymmene Corp. says his company is closing its operations in the province.

Enlarge Photo

david smith for the telegraph-journal

Timo Suutarla, general manager for UPM Miramichi, says that a greater wood supply and a biomass policy would not have made a difference in his firm’s decision to shut down.

"We are leaving New Brunswick. UPM is leaving New Brunswick," said Timo Suutarla, general manager for UPM Miramichi.

UPM closed down its two ground wood pulp and paper mills in the province in August 2007.

It made the closure permanent in December, leaving more than 650 without jobs.

The decision came almost eight years after UPM spent nearly a billion dollars to buy the two mills and a kraft mill as well as a sawmill in Bathurst from Repap Inc.

It closed the kraft mill in 2004, leaving 400 out of work.

Suutarla was in Fredericton for the release of two reports that outlined options for the future of the forest industry.

Among the recommendations of one of the reports, titled Future Opportunities for the Forest Products Industry in New Brunswick, was for increasing the amount of wood planted and harvested in the province and for a biomass policy to help mills offset energy costs.

Suutarla said that a greater wood supply and a biomass policy would not have made a difference in his firm's decision to shut down.

At the time of the closure company officials blamed the rapid appreciation of the Canadian dollar and a glut of magazine paper in the market as primary reasons behind their decision.

The fate of the shuttered mills remains uncertain.

There are "interested parties" who are in talks with UPM, he said.

"We are in serious talks."

Suutarla said he was "hopeful" those talks would result in a sale before the end of the year.

It is unclear what will happen to the company's last remaining interest in N.B., a sawmill in Bathurst.

UPM is a Helsinki, Finland-based global forest products firm that is involved in printing papers, specialty papers, label materials and wood products. It has operations in 14 countries and employs about 26,000 people in Finland, Germany, France, the U.K., Austria, the United States and China.

It had more than 10 billion euros in sales last year.