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October 03. 2012 12:27AM
Willis Blevins, manager of the Gorham Paper & Tissue mill, has given tours of the new tissue machine to many elected officials, including Governor John Lynch, who toured the mill this summer. (SARA YOUNG-KNOX)
Upgrade has paper mill in 'start-up mode'
Willis Blevins, manager of the Gorham Paper & Tissue mill, has given tours of the new tissue machine to many elected officials, including Governor John Lynch, who toured the mill this summer. (SARA YOUNG-KNOX)
GORHAM — It's big, it's beautiful, and it's brand new.
It's also very complicated, with its various parts coming from manufacturing companies overseas, since firms are no longer making paper machines in this country. Because many of its components are just getting to know each other, the new multi-million dollar tissue machine at Gorham Paper & Tissue is being put through its paces before it starts making marketable tissue.
“We're in a start-up mode,” mill manager Willis Blevins said Tuesday. He said the mill made a little paper on Monday night, but getting the machine online is a big process, as each piece is individually commissioned.
Blevins said the process started about two weeks ago. The machine will greatly increase the capacity of the mill, and supply a product — private label tissue — to consumers that cannot be substituted by the latest app on a computer touch screen.
The $35 million project is a large capital investment in the future of wood fiber products in the Androscoggin Valley, where just up the road in Berlin at the site of a former pulp mill a biomass plant is being built. Until about six years ago, the Berlin mill supplied pulp, the raw ingredient for paper manufacturing, to the Gorham paper mill.
Meanwhile, the Androscoggin Valley Regional Refuse Disposal District is working on bringing gas through a pipeline down from the Mount Carberry Landfill to the mill. Methane generated from the decaying garbage in the landfill will be mixed with the natural gas that is piped to the mill. The pipeline was built under the present ownership.
Previously, the mill relied heavily on fuel oil for the steam generation used in the papermaking process.
Tilton has invested heavily in the mill's future since buying the facility in the spring of 2011. Patriarch Partners bought the mill from Counsel R.B. Capital, which had purchased the facility after the former owner, Fraser Papers, closed it in fall 2010.
As to a ribbon cutting to officially bring the machine on line, Blevins said, “We're trying to coordinate it with Lynn,” referring to Patriarch founder and CEO Lynn Tilton.
In August, the Governor and Executive Council approved the awarding of a loan guarantee for the new paper machine for White Mountain Tissue, LLC for 80 percent of the $10,000 on a loan from the Bank of New Hampshire through the Guaranteed Asset Program (GAP).
syoungknox@newstote.com
It's also very complicated, with its various parts coming from manufacturing companies overseas, since firms are no longer making paper machines in this country. Because many of its components are just getting to know each other, the new multi-million dollar tissue machine at Gorham Paper & Tissue is being put through its paces before it starts making marketable tissue.
“We're in a start-up mode,” mill manager Willis Blevins said Tuesday. He said the mill made a little paper on Monday night, but getting the machine online is a big process, as each piece is individually commissioned.
Blevins said the process started about two weeks ago. The machine will greatly increase the capacity of the mill, and supply a product — private label tissue — to consumers that cannot be substituted by the latest app on a computer touch screen.
The $35 million project is a large capital investment in the future of wood fiber products in the Androscoggin Valley, where just up the road in Berlin at the site of a former pulp mill a biomass plant is being built. Until about six years ago, the Berlin mill supplied pulp, the raw ingredient for paper manufacturing, to the Gorham paper mill.
Meanwhile, the Androscoggin Valley Regional Refuse Disposal District is working on bringing gas through a pipeline down from the Mount Carberry Landfill to the mill. Methane generated from the decaying garbage in the landfill will be mixed with the natural gas that is piped to the mill. The pipeline was built under the present ownership.
Previously, the mill relied heavily on fuel oil for the steam generation used in the papermaking process.
Tilton has invested heavily in the mill's future since buying the facility in the spring of 2011. Patriarch Partners bought the mill from Counsel R.B. Capital, which had purchased the facility after the former owner, Fraser Papers, closed it in fall 2010.
As to a ribbon cutting to officially bring the machine on line, Blevins said, “We're trying to coordinate it with Lynn,” referring to Patriarch founder and CEO Lynn Tilton.
In August, the Governor and Executive Council approved the awarding of a loan guarantee for the new paper machine for White Mountain Tissue, LLC for 80 percent of the $10,000 on a loan from the Bank of New Hampshire through the Guaranteed Asset Program (GAP).
syoungknox@newstote.com
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