BANGOR – Even though a court-approved deadline has passed for offers to buy bankrupt Great Northern Paper Inc., another bid for the company is in the works.

Brascan Corp. of Toronto confirmed Wednesday evening that it is trying to come up with a serious, qualified offer before federal bankruptcy court convenes Friday to approve a sale.

“We’re still interested and we’re still there,” said Richard Legault, executive vice president responsible for business development for Brascan Corp. “We are continuing to pursue an acquisition of these assets.”

But Wednesday, Ronald H. Stern, the owner of Belgravia Paper Co., confirmed that despite speculation, he has no plans of withdrawing his $91 million bid to buy the mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket.

Belgravia, of Vancouver, British Columbia, is required to notify U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Louis H. Kornreich whether it wants to continue its effort to buy both GNP mills.

Bankruptcy court proceedings on Great Northern-related issues, including the sale, begin at 9 a.m. Friday in the federal building in Bangor.

During a telephone interview Wednesday, Stern said he was satisfied that a Tuesday deadline for other offers had passed without any new bids coming in, and that he was working to complete the purchase of the mills.

“We are moving forward,” Stern said. “It’s a complex process. We are trying to do our best to come up with the right long-term plan that really works long term.”

That is exactly what Brascan wants to do, Legault said in a telephone interview from Toronto. He said he has been talking with Great Northern executives and attorneys to present a bid that would “provide value” to the company and the mill towns.

Great Northern’s attorneys did not return telephone calls for comment Wednesday.

Legault said Belgravia’s offer is making any attempts to submit a qualified bid difficult, Legault said, because “it is so conditional.”

To be considered as a qualified bid, a company would have to agree to top Belgravia’s $91 million offer by at least $2 million, along with meeting other conditions. And the company would have to be willing to pay Belgravia a $5 million “breakup fee” if it were successful in outbidding Belgravia.

A source close to the sale process said Brascan’s offer matches Belgravia’s $91 million on price only, but not on what assets are going to be purchased.

Legault would not elaborate on an amount for Brascan’s offer or discuss how the company was going to deal with the fact it missed a Tuesday deadline.

“I’m not really in a position to discuss those details,” Legault said.

He acknowledged that Brascan missed Tuesday’s deadline, but that is not stopping his company from pursuing every option to initiate an auction of Great Northern on Friday.

“We haven’t gone home,” Legault said.

Brascan Corp. already has operations in Maine. It’s power-supply division, Brascan Energy Marketing Services, under its subsidiary Great Lakes Hydro America, purchased Great Northern’s electricity generators in 2001.

One of Brascan’s other subsidiaries is Nexfor Inc., the Canadian paper- and forest-products company that owns Fraser Paper, which has a paper mill in Madawaska.

Belgravia Paper is a subsidiary of Belgravia Investments Ltd. of British Columbia. Belgravia Paper has four mills, in Alberta, Ontario, Texas and Oregon. Stern, formerly of Winnipeg, Manitoba, just barely missed the “Rich 100” list of Canadian businesspeople in 2001.

He amassed his fortune, however, with his pulp and paper mills, and with two newspapers, the Winnipeg Free Press and the Brandon Sun. With Bob Silver, a partner in the Manitoba papers, he owns Winnipeg’s Western Glove Works Co., a maker of Silver Jeans that, until 2000, also produced Calvin Klein jeans in Canada.

On Tuesday, Brascan, which supplies electricity to Great Northern, notified the bankruptcy court that it objected to the sale to Belgravia.

In a court document, Brascan stated that “Great Northern and Belgravia have failed to satisfy the statutory requirements of providing adequate assurance of future performance under Brascan’s contracts.”

On Wednesday, Stern said his company has been trying to negotiate a power supply deal with Brascan to meet the requirements, and those discussions are continuing.

And, he said, he is continuing negotiations with Great Northern’s 14 unions, suppliers and customers to secure contracts and start up operations as soon as possible.

Great Northern’s unions already have tentative labor agreements with two companies, but not with Belgravia, according to a court document filed by the unions Tuesday.

According to sources, one of the companies is Fraser Paper, which is a subsidiary of Brascan. The other, according to sources, is Kruger.

Dave Lowell, an international union official, said he could not confirm whether Fraser and Kruger were the two companies, but described them as “highly respected” and “good corporate citizens.”

Lowell confirmed that discussions with Belgravia have been tense.

“We don’t think they are sincere in attempting to reach an agreement with us,” Lowell said.

“For the good of the communities and the state, we don’t support Belgravia, but we do support the others, who have proven positive track records.”

Stern said the company does not want to negotiate union contracts through the media. But, he said, discussions with the unions have been “forthright.”

“We are not interested in doing something that in five or 15 years from now [puts] these mills back in the same position,” he said.

Stern said he wanted to make the operations viable by filling positions with qualified people who are sincere in making the company run successfully through the best and worst of economic times.

“We don’t want that opportunity to be frittered away,” he said. “We don’t enjoy disagreeing with people, but we are going to insist on doing things in a way that we think is best from a long-term standpoint.”

Belgravia, or any other buyer of Great Northern, is required to close the deal by April 21.

“We’re committed to doing everything to take this [sale] to conclusion,” Stern said.

According to sources close to the sale process, Belgravia has been entertaining offers from companies interested in purchasing the East Millinocket mill, which produces directory paper.

Stern said “some people” have approached him about spinning off one of the mills, but he has made no commitments to sell the East Millinocket mill to another company.

“We are interested in doing what makes the most sense,” he said. “As of now we have no agreement with another company. Are there options? There’s a lot of options.”

For the time being, Stern said, he is focusing on setting up a new business in the two mills once the asset sale is completed.

“It’s a fresh start,” he said.

Stern said the two paper mills would not be started up immediately. He said he had no specific date, adding that international paper market conditions would drive machine start-ups.

“We would start the mills up sequentially, depending on the markets,” he said. “The faster we can start them up the better it is for the company, but we are not going to start up machines just to build inventory.”

But once the mills are up and running, Stern said he wants to operate them for a long period of time.

“We are trying to put together a sound operating plan that will apply to both mills for them to be run in place,” he said.

On Wednesday, Stern shared some of his other ideas on what he would – and wouldn’t – do as owner of the mills. His business plan calls for:

. Possibly changing the company’s name. Belgravia wants to purchase the assets of Great Northern, and not its debt-ridden operations. And although the sale is winding down, the bankruptcy of Great Northern will continue.

Stern said his company would probably change the GNP name. “The only reason why we wouldn’t is if it was beneficial for former employees.”

According to sources, the pensions of Great Northern’s 677 retirees are linked to the company maintaining the name.

. Keeping the newly rebuilt No. 11 paper machine in the Millinocket mill, not dismantling it and shipping it to another paper mill he owns in Alberta, Canada, as was rumored for weeks.

“Nobody is going to take anything away,” he said. “Nobody would pay these values to take it all apart and move it somewhere.”

. Shutting down the sulfite pulp mill in Millinocket. Sulfite pulp is the key ingredient used to make paper, and Belgravia plans to replace sulfite pulp with kraft pulp purchased in the open market, Stern said.

“It [kraft pulp] gives a better quality product,” Stern said.

. Maintaining the current product line. The East Millinocket mill produces telephone directory paper and the Millinocket mill produces papers used for advertising.

“Our position in the telephone directory business … we’ll have to take some time to build that up again,” Stern said.

. Streamlining the work force. Stern declined to give specific employment numbers. But sources say the current employment level of 1,130 people could be reduced by between 40 percent and 60 percent.

“We believe that there is a lot of very talented people there,” Stern said. “I have no doubt that there are going to be a lot of people, who previously worked at the mills, that we are going to be keen to rehire.”

He said the company would use “all of the tools” in its selection process for hiring people so the company would get the best possible mix of people across the board, including managers.

The hiring process could include testing applicants for math, verbal and spatial-reasoning abilities, in-depth interviews and a review of their work history.

“We’re going to have a selection process that’s appropriate,” Stern said. “It’s based on everything. We expect to be hiring a great number of people who worked at Great Northern.”