Eastern Paper chief confident firm will recover

LINCOLN – Despite the financial tough times facing the paper industry, the owner of Eastern Paper’s Brewer and Lincoln mills is confident the company will successfully emerge from Chapter 11 protection.

The remarks from Joseph H. Torras, the owner of Eastern Pulp & Paper Corp., came Monday during a Rotary Club dinner held for Gov. Angus King, who received his first tour of the Lincoln mill.

“By this time next year, we will be out of Chapter 11,” Torras told the crowd of about 40 people, which included area town officials, business owners and others. “We have been improving one month at a time,” he said. “I have been working seven days a week for months to make sure this company will be here [in the future].”

Torras said the company’s financial condition was gradually improving during a time when the paper industry itself was declining. He attributed Eastern’s recovery to the efforts of every single employee.

Torras told the crowd the company had come a long way since he purchased the Lincoln mill 33 years ago. The company has spent more than $96 million on environmental projects in the last nine years.

He said the company is meeting and in many cases exceeding state and federal environmental standards. It has eliminated the use of elemental chlorine in its bleaching process. Torras said the company is seeking a patent for its newly developed bleaching process. The new “super O2 process” is a two-stage process that uses oxygen in its pulp-bleaching process.

The governor commended mill officials for dramatic environmental improvements. “This paper mill right now is probably the cleanest in the U.S. in terms of what they put into the Penobscot River and into the air. It is absolutely an amazing environmental story,” said King.

Reviewing the company’s environmental performance, King said it appeared the company had one of the lowest discharges in the country. He said the report showed no detection of dioxin being discharged into the water from the company’s bleach plant. “It’s incredible,” said the governor noting that testing was more stringent now than it had been several years ago.

“This is great news for Maine, the Penobscot River and for the people of this company,” said King.

“The remarkable thing to me is that all of this has been done by a relatively small company and was done by people in the Lincoln mill,” said the governor.

Many years ago, the company stopped using softwood chips and began using sawdust waste. Eastern is one of only a few companies in the country that uses sawdust – about 250,000 tons or 1 million cubic yards a year – to make the pulp used to produce fine papers at its two mills in Brewer and Lincoln. The waste sawdust preserves the annual growth of about 250,000 acres of virgin timber a year, according to company officials.

“This must be one of the largest recycling operations in the country,” said King of the company’s use of sawdust.

Company officials showed King the types of products made from the paper and tissue it produces. The company is the largest manufacturer in the country of deep-dyed tissue products.

Last October, the company obtained U.S. and Australian patents for inventing a multiply tissue adhering process that makes high-speed converting and flexographic printing possible. The patent is for Eastern’s specialized process of spray-bonding the individual piles of napkin tissue together so they can be easily printed in multiple bright colors and designs.

The governor said he was impressed by the pride workers showed in their jobs and with their innovation and creativity in developing unique processes that are environmentally friendly.

King’s visit also included a tour of the headquarters of the Johnston Dandy Co. The 46-year-old company, which manufactures rolls for the paper industry, has five other plants located in Holyoke, Mass., Millhall, Pa., Syracuse, N.Y., Neenah, Wis., and LaSalle, Quebec. It employs nearly 75 people in all of its plants.

A dandy roll is used to improve the formation of paper and is sometimes used to put watermarks in paper.

Business at the Johnston Dandy Co. is tied closely to the paper industry.

Dan Johnston, president of the company, said Eastern Pulp & Paper Corp. isn’t the only company filing for chapter 11. As a provider to the paper industry, Johnston said other companies in other states are making similar filings, but those companies are not operating like Eastern’s Lincoln and Brewer plants.

Johnston said some companies are downsizing and a number of mills had closed in the past few years, which has forced the company to look for new customers.

Despite the tough economic times for the paper industry, Johnston said the company is doing well, but would like to be doing better. “We are under some very strong price constraints,” he said. “We are growing through acquisition and territorial expansion,” said the president.