G-P not selling Old Town mill despite recent layoffs

OLD TOWN – The fact Georgia-Pacific Corp. is not considering selling its Old Town mill has puzzled many of those affected by last week’s elimination of the plant’s tissue production operations. More than 300 workers lost their jobs.

The basic reason the mill is not for sale is economics, said mill manager Ralph Feck, who also serves as vice president of Maine operations for G-P.

“It’s hard for the average person to grasp,” he said this week. “If you look at Great Northern Paper, it is a stand-alone business. G-P’s Old Town operation is a retail mill in a 14-mill business.”

Feck said when G-P purchased the Fort James Corp. in 1997 and acquired six mills, its business grew to 14 facilities.

“G-P is not going to sell a part of the whole retail business,” he said.

He added that if the Old Town mill was sold, the probable buyer would be a direct competitor to G-P.

“The economy is soft and there is excess paper in the marketplace,” said Feck. “So if we sell it to somebody, you’re going to sell it to somebody in the paper industry and still have overproduction in the marketplace.”

Selling the Old Town mill would be like cutting off an arm, Feck added.

“We’re just one piece of a bigger pie,” he said. “We’re not selling the retail consumer product business, we’re realigning the retail consumer product business.”

G-P is headquartered at Atlanta, Ga., and is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of tissue, packaging, paper, building products, pulp and related chemicals, according to its Web site. The site states G-P’s 2002 annual sales exceeded $23 billion and that the company employs approximately 65,000 people at 400 locations in North America and Europe.

G-P senior communications manager Robert Burns said it’s true that the company doesn’t want to sell the business to a competitor but added G-P does care about its employees.

“It’s an issue of overcapacity,” he said. “It’s not an issue of not caring for employees, it’s costs. We did make an investment in the facility to try and make it more competitive.”

Burns said G-P spent $10 million to make the Old Town facility more energy-efficient in an effort to keep its tissue producing operation up and running. He said the company also is doing all it can to try and keep the pulp production operational.

One former G-P worker said he can’t believe 300 people are out of work and there is no hope of ever returning. John Kennedy Jr., a 23-year veteran G-P worker who was an assistant crew leader for the converting line, said if the company would sell the mill, he and his former co-workers could get back to doing their jobs.

“I think we should all get together to keep what we have built and keep it functioning,” he said. “They’re stripping the company of what we’ve worked 100 years to build.

“We need legislation in the state that stops big business from coming into the state and doing this,” he said. “I think it’s time they [the government] look at issues like this. I personally feel … this company has done nothing but rape this state. I am writing my representatives and I hope that everybody else does too.”

G-P permanently stopped producing tissue at the plant on April 4. The following Monday, workers started to take apart two converting lines, which took large rolls of paper and turned them into paper products.

“These two particular lines are critical lines and need to be running to meet our needs, so we’re relocating them to another facility,” said Feck. “The bath tissue line and the paper towel line are being taken apart and are going to Plattsburgh [New York]. There are still 11 converting lines that are still here. It’s possible in the future that the other lines could go, too.”