BREWER – Key members of the city’s administrative team plan to meet next week with representatives from Eastern Fine Paper Inc. of Brewer, which is facing financial difficulties.

On Sept. 22, officials from Eastern Pulp & Paper Corp., parent company of the Eastern Fine paper mill, filed for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, a measure designed to shield the company from its creditors while it works to restructure and pay its debts.

In its petition, the corporation, which also owns a mill in Lincoln, lists debts totaling $181.3 million and assets of $187.8 million. The Brewer mill accounts for $70.65 million of that debt and $73.84 million of the assets.

On Thursday, the Brewer mill’s parent company announced plans to shut down its No. 3 paper machine indefinitely and to lay off the 41 workers associated with that machine.

The financial challenges facing the mill are a matter of concern to city officials in Brewer. Eastern Fine accounts for about 5 percent of Brewer’s tax base, making it one of the largest taxpayers. The mill also is one the community’s largest employers with a work force of more than 400.

To that end, city staff have been working closely with mill officials, who in turn have kept them abreast of all developments as the reorganization process has unfolded, City Manager Stephen Bost said late this week.

“Bob Sullivan [Eastern Fine general manager] and I spoke [Thursday] and we are going to put together a meeting sometime next week to discuss some of the issues facing the mill and to see what, if any, role the city can take to help the mill [make its way back to financial health],” Bost said Friday.

Though a date for that meeting has not yet been set, Bost said that the session would bring together representatives from the Brewer mill and its parent company and key members of the staff at City Hall, including Bost, Mayor Eddie Campbell, Economic Development Director Drew Sachs and Finance Director Stan Harmon.

According to mill officials, No. 3 machine is the mill’s oldest and smallest. No. 1 and No. 2 machines have received extensive modernization in recent years and have the capacity to absorb all of the tonnage that No. 3 was producing much more efficiently.

At the time of the Chapter 11 court filing, Joseph H. Torras Sr., the company’s chairman, cited depressed printing and writing tablet markets, higher energy and raw material costs and the need for major environmental improvements as reasons for Eastern Pulp & Paper’s financial difficulties.

George J. Marcus, a Portland attorney representing Eastern Pulp & Paper, previously said it could take nine months to a year for the company to come up with a reorganization plan.

Torras said the company anticipated recovering successfully and emerging stronger and healthier and that it intended to keep both mills open.