Volume 2, Number 5
Dec 1989

Company News

Newton Falls Paper Mill, Inc., a 100% alkaline company and a subsidiary of Stora, has changed its name to Papyrus Newton Falls, a member of the STORA Group. They hope they Can get everyone to pronounce it the Swedish way, "pa-peer-us." They are at PO Box 253, Newton Falls, NY 13666 (800/ 448-8900) and they make coated and uncoated book papers and offset, among other kinds of paper.

Kymmene Corporation has changed its name to Kaukas Oy. The Finland-based company exports some papers to the U.S.

On Friday October 27, Continental Lime (one of only two North American companies providing on-site plants for the manufacture of precipitated calcium carbonate) became GK Carbonates, when it was purchased by Georgia Kaolin Co. , a subsidiary of Combustion Engineering. The purchase included the assets and technologies of both the Canadian and the U.S. companies. The new company will provide technical paper application and acid-to-alkaline conversion services as part of its program to supply on-site KC facilities to its papermaking customers. Continental Lime installed Canada's first on-site KC unit at Weyerhaeuser Canada's paper mill at Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

Pfizer Inc. announced November 7 that it had reached tentative agreement with Westvaco Corp. to build an on-site PCC plant at Westvaco's pulp and paper mill in Wickliffe, Kentucky. Until the plant is completed late next spring, Pfizer said it will supply Westvaco on an interim basis from a mobile PCC production unit scheduled to arrive at Wickliffe in mid-December. The PCC facility, which will be owned and operated by Pfizer, will be the eleventh Pfizer plant operated or under construction in North America. It will convert recovered carbon dioxide, lime and water to Albacar HO^TM, a form of calcium carbonate used in fine paper for high brightness and opacity. The plant will cost about $10 million.

OMYA Inc., a company founded in 1894, operates more than 60 ground calcium carbonate manufacturing plants. It has completed an expansion project at its Florence, Vermont, plant that will increase the capacity of the plant's secondary and finished grinding operations by 50%. The Florence plant, which has been repeatedly expanded since it was constructed in 1979, is the largest ultrafine CaCO₃ plant in North America. Peter Duncan, president of OMYA, says OMYA believes that American papermakers will continue to follow the lead of their European counterparts, who produce typical wood-free paper with an average of 20% ground calcium carbonate as fiber replacement. Similar products in the U.S. now contain about 12%..