Volume 05, Number 4
Sep 1992

Company News

• Domtar is planning to convert its Cornwall, Ontario, mill to alkaline in 1993, and estimates that it will cost about $3,000,000 in Canadian dollars.
• Pfizer will build an onsite precipitated calcium carbonate plant at Repap Enterprises' Kimberly, Wisconsin, coated paper mill as part of an alkaline conversion.
• Pfizer will also build a plant at the Simpson Plainwell mill in Plainwell, Michigan. Ground was broken in June and it is scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of 1992. It will also supply other paper mills in the area. This will be Pfizer's 28th satellite.
• Pfizer bought a shut-down limestone mining and processing complex in Gulliver, Michigan, in 1990, and started it up again last April. Metallurgical high-calcium and dolomitic limestone from Gulliver is converted to lime for use in steel, paper, glass, concrete and other industrial applications. It is also the starting material for manufacturing precipitated calcium carbonate.
• Soon we will be saying Minerals Technologies, Inc., instead of Pfizer (meaning, of course, its Specialty Minerals Group) when we talk about the builder of a new PCC plant, because the specialty minerals operations are being spun off so that Pfizer can concentrate on its health-care operations. Pfizer will hold about 30 to 40% of the shares of the new company when its registration with the SEC is complete later this year.
• Badger Paper Mills purchased the Dayton mill of the old Howard Paper Mills May 1 from Fox River Paper Co. and Harrison Holdings (each of which owned a paper machine and other assets at the Dayton mill). Badger has one mill, which is alkaline, in Peshtigo, Wisconsin. The Dayton mill converted to alkaline several months ago, according to one source.
  The Permalife line of papers, which is well-known in library and archive circles, was not part of the sale. It is retained by Fox River, which owns the Urbana, Ohio, mill where it is made.