Volume 5, Number 2
May 1992

Company News

Midtec Paper Corp., in Kimberly, Wisconsin, the only Repap mill that makes freesheet, has changed its name to Repap Wisconsin to identify itself more closely with the parent company, Repap Enterprises Inc. of Montreal. (Repap is paper spelled backwards).

Last July this newsletter announced that Fox River probably had bought Howard Paper Mills (from Warrior River Paper Co.). A news item in the August 1991 Pulp & Paper confirms this, and gives historical and background information about Howard Paper, as it is now known. Howard Paper, by the way, has responded to this Newsletter's permanent paper questionnaire, saying that the following papers meet both ANSI and ASTM permanence standards; the ASTM standard named is D3290, and it is understood that the highest level of permanence and the lowest level of durability is meant (these levels were chosen by the editor for convenience in administering the questionnaire). Percent of secondary fiber is "unspecified," according to the respondent.

Howard Permalife Bond
Howard Permalife Ledger
Howard Permalife Text
Howard Permalife Cover
Permalife Library Card

New paper machines are planned for installation at five mills that either make alkaline freesheet now, or are scheduled to make it in the future: Willamette's Penntech mill, Champion's Courtland mill, Boise Cascade's International Falls mill Union Camp's Eastover mill, and Georgia-Pacifies mill in Ashdown.

The Georgia-Pacific Corp., which stretched its resources thin by buying Great Northern Nekoosa just before the recession, has other money worries: it just found out that the insurance carrier for its Leaf River Forest Products mill in Mississippi will not cover two of the claims against it for releasing dioxin into the river from its pulp mill there several years ago. They total $4.2 million, and other suits are pending. Georgia-Pacific is appealing both judgments. (In the April Pulp & Paper, where this news was found, there is also a one-page statement of G-P's position on chlorine-free pulps. It says that the company invested $100 million to reduce the minute amounts of dioxin in its pulp mill effluents by 85%, and it did this by substituting chlorine dioxide for some of the elemental chlorine in the bleaching process. It will not look for a chlorine-free bleaching process, because the cost would not be justified by the benefits.)

Company News from Abroad

Pfizer Specialty Minerals Group will build its first European precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) plant at the Aussedat Rey paper mill in Saillat-sur-Vienne, France. (European paper mills typically use chalk as a calcium carbonate filler, but they reportedly value PCC for its brightness, purity and flexibility of size and shape.) However, this decision may have been an American rather than a French one, since International Paper now owns Aussedat Rey. Three or four other companies besides Pfizer are said to be making PCC now in Europe.

Less than 5% of the 2.5 million metric tons of woodfree copy and book paper produced in Brazil is sized with alkaline sizing, but this proportion is expected to increase dramatically in the next few years, as more paper is produced for export and as Pfizer makes low-price PCC available from its onsite plants.

In Argentina, there are five machines that produce alkaline paper.

There is a new integrated pulp and paper mill in Mexico, near Chihuahua, making uncoated alkaline freesheet, which is being marketed initially in the Southwestern US. The mill is called Pondercel Corporation, because its pulp comes from the ponderosa pine, and it is a subsidiary of Ponderosa Industrial. The calcium carbonate used as a filler and in the size press comes from a Pfizer onsite plant. All papers are being made on special order or for sale under the name of converters or distributors (i.e., there will be no market brands-papers marketed under the name of the mill). The company's sales and marketing headquarters are in Texas (444 Executive Center Blvd., Suite 200, El Paso, TX 79902,915/542-2392,Fax9l5/532-6944). Ralph Mirkin is the Vice President for Sales and Marketing.