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CONCORD, N.H. – A Connecticut company officially took ownership of the idle pulp and paper mills in Berlin and Gorham on Friday, giving North Country residents new hope of getting back to normal.
Officials from Fraser Papers of Stamford, Conn., joined Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, state officials and former millworkers to celebrate the signing of the paperwork that completed the company’s purchase of the mills.
When the mills shut down Aug. 12, 2001, 860 workers lost their jobs and the region’s economy was crippled. The mills’ parent company, American Tissue Inc. of Hauppauge, N.Y., filed for bankruptcy a month later.
State and local officials have touted the sale as a major step in getting northern New Hampshire’s largest private employer up and running again.
“We just won the Super Bowl,” Berlin Mayor Bob Danderson said exuberantly after receiving a $6.1 million check from the company.
As part of the deal, Fraser Papers paid millions in back taxes owed to several communities by the mills’ former owners. Gorham got $1.3 million. Another $22,000 went to Shelburne.
A handful of workers will be back on the job in Gorham today.
Eddie DeBlois, president of the millworkers’ union, said 250 members will return to their jobs in about a week. Workers at the Berlin mill aren’t expected to be back until January.
Not everyone will get their jobs back. Of those who were let go, about 700 are expected to be called back.
Shaheen and other officials said it had been a long and intense effort to find a new owner for the mills.
“All of us here who have been working on this effort thought at times we wouldn’t get to this day,” she said. “But it really is the result of the hard work and effort of so many people”
Fraser, a subsidiary of Nexfor Inc. of Toronto, bought the mills for $31.5 million. Toronto-based Brascan Corp. owns a 42 percent share of Nexfor, a company official has said.
“It’s a done deal,” Bert Martin, president of Fraser Papers, said. “[Now] we got to go out and make money.”
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