Verso Corporation plans to upgrade the shuttered pulp line and No. 3 paper machine at its Androscoggin Mill in Jay, Maine, enabling this equipment to restart for the manufacture of packaging products, as the company says in the press release received by Lesprom Network.
The paper machine and associated pulping capacity were temporarily idled in January 2017 and shut down in July 2017 as a result of declining demand for the graphic paper products formerly produced on the machine.
With an anticipated completion date in the 3Q of this year, this project will help Verso continue to diversify its product mix into growing market segments and is expected to create approximately 120 full-time jobs at the mill and additional jobs throughout the Maine forest products supply chain.
The estimated total capital cost of the project is $17 million, $4 million of which will come from a Maine Technology Asset Fund 2.0 challenge grant administered by the Maine Technology Institute. Funds from the grant will be become available as certain milestones in the project are reached.
Verso Corporation is the leading North American producer of printing and specialty papers and pulp.
