BAILEYVILLE – It’s bad news for Domtar Inc. pulp and paper millworkers – how many no one knows yet – after company officials announced Wednesday that the paper machine would be shut down for the month of March.

Union workers learned of the break in production on Tuesday. Company officials are crunching the numbers now, but it could involve upwards of 90 employees. The company has about 500 employees.

Company officials are blaming this latest slowdown on market-related conditions.

“We are just going to work to match our production to the demand of our customers and we need to make an adjustment in our inventory to do that,” company spokesman Scott Beal said Wednesday.

It was just last November that the company announced it was cutting back on production for two months because of the same market-related conditions. They were up and running again in January. “We are going to go down on [March] 1st and be down through the 28th and we are going to start the machine back up on the 29th,” Beal said.

Beal said this latest shutdown had nothing to do with the merger or anything else for that matter.

Last year the Montreal-based Domtar reached an agreement with Weyerhaeuser Co. to combine its fine-paper business with the Canadian papermaker in a deal that is valued at around $3.3 billion. Recently, the company mailed a 500-page notice to shareholders about the merger. If approved, Domtar will be owned approximately 55 percent by Weyerhaeuser shareholders and 45 percent by Domtar shareholders.

The company also has come under fire from a local activist group called the Friends of Magurrewock who claim the Baileyville mill is going to close.

The group has been pushing for a third bridge to be built in Baileyville, not Calais. The bridge would span the St. Croix River and connect Maine with Canada. As part of their argument, they’ve claimed that when the town’s largest employer closed, the new bridge would save the economy.

Those statements brought a response from Domtar’s general manager last week. Tim Lowe sent a letter to the Baileyville Town Council saying the Friends were using “scare” tactics to make their case.

Lowe said that while the company supports the group’s right to debate the issue of a new bridge spanning the St. Croix River, it did not support the group’s use of “unsubstantiated and false information to further their case.”

There were no plans to close the mill, he said.

Beal agreed. “This has nothing to do with the merger or anything,” he said. “This is related to managing our inventory to the demand of our customers.”

Domtar is the third-largest producer of uncoated free-sheet paper in North America. It is also a leading manufacturer of business papers, commercial printing and publication papers, and technical and specialty papers.