Fraser to sell 760,000 acres in New Brunswick

MADAWASKA – Fraser Papers Inc. confirmed Friday that it is in the early stages of divesting some 760,000 acres of New Brunswick woodlands.

A spokesman would not say whether any Maine lands would be affected.

In addition, the city of Edmundston, New Brunswick – across the St. John River from Madawaska – announced earlier this week that the city had bought from Fraser an Edmundston golf club and a hydroelectric dam.

Michele Poitras, director of communications for Edmundston, said the city bought the golf club for $1 and the hydroelectric facility for $2.5 million (Canadian).

Ben Vaughan, spokesman at Fraser headquarters in Toronto, said the company is selling some assets because it wants to reinvest in its core business: making paper.

“We’ve initiated the process to find the surface value of our timberlands,” Vaughan said. “That is, to the extent that something can be done to reinvest in our core business. This is very far from a done deal,” he said. “All we’ve said publicly is that we have a started a process.”

The company still has cutting rights on thousands of acres of Crown land, which is land owned by the province, in New Brunswick.

Lumber from the company’s woodlands has been used to supply its pulp mill in Edmundston and a sawmill in Plaster Rock, New Brunswick.

Vaughan also verified the sale of the company’s golf course and its hydroelectric dam at Edmundston. He said he had few details. Vaughan would not comment on reports that the company also was selling a helicopter, used in the woodlands, and a corporate jet. “We don’t comment on rumors,” he said.

The company, which used to have corporate headquarters in Stamford, Conn., moved its home office to Toronto this past year. In the past 18 months, the company has been streamlining its manpower needs at mills in Edmundston and Madawaska.

More than 300 jobs have been cut at the Madawaska-Edmundston operation, and an additional 80 will be cut by March.

The Fraser-Edmundston golf course was founded by Edmundston residents in 1926 and incorporated in 1931. Fraser bought the course in 1943.

Reports had been circulating for some time that the company wanted to get rid of the golf course. It has retained some areas around the facility, and at least one road on the golf course.

Edmundston has created a nonprofit corporation to operate the facility, and a board will be named by next spring. Mayor Gerald Allain has said that no property tax dollars would be used to operate or maintain the facility.

The hydroelectric dam will be operated by Energy Edmundston, a city-owned corporation that already generates electricity for the city with a hydroelectric dam at Second Falls, about 10 miles north of the city.

The $2.5 million price will be paid by Energy Edmundston, also without using tax money, according to Allain.

The Madawaska River dam, visible from several sites in downtown Edmundston and within half a mile of the St. John River, was constructed in 1917. The facility generates 9 megawatts of power.

The deal will allow Energy Edmundston to increase its local electrical energy output to furnish 10 to 12 percent of the city’s electrical energy. Its present output generates 5 percent of the city’s electrical needs.