Jan 23, 2009. /Lesprom.com/. Fraser Papers temporarily idled its No. 7 machine at its mill in Madawaska, Maine as a result of a lack of orders, informed Lesprom Network according to the Bangor Daily News. The measure is part of a company-wide effort to build and manage cash flow by running its machines only when orders are in hand, company officials said. “We find ourselves in some pretty tough economic times, and we don’t have a lot of visibility into some pieces of our businesses,” Jeff Dutton, Fraser’s COO, said. “We are not going to be building speculative inventory.” The No. 4, 6 and 7 machines are low on back orders, but all six papermaking machines will be monitored weekly to see if workloads merit their remaining operational, he said. “We’ve never been in an economic climate like this,” said the South Portland, Maine-based Dutton. “We talk to our customers and they are having trouble really seeing how it’s going to go. It’s a murky future and we are trying to be responsible with shareholders’ equity and certainly, in this case, their cash.” No. 7's downtime will end on January 26. The downtime affects 25 workers, said Bill Peterson, the company’s director of human resources. However, the day No. 7 comes back on-stream, Fraser plans to take 7-10 days of downtime on No. 6 paper machine - a move that will temporarily affect as many as 30 workers. The Madawaska mill employs about 712 workers and has a production capacity of 460 thousand tons per year. The company produces a wide variety of technical specialty, fine printing and writing papers and groundwood papers on the six paper machines.