The first roll came off the supercalendered paper machine at 1:11 a.m. Wednesday, a major milestone for the Point Tupper mill many once left for dead.
The former NewPage Port Hawkesbury paper mill, rechristened Port Hawkesbury Paper LLC by new owners Pacific West Commercial Corp., an affiliate of Stern Partners Inc. of Vancouver, had been buzzing with activity over the last two weeks to prepare for this moment.
“We’re very, very happy we did because we have customers with orders that want to run that paper on Monday,” Marc Dube, the mill’s restructuring manager, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
“So we needed to get production started, and obviously we had some small items that stopped us, but once production started, we ran the first 12 hours without a paper break.”
A substantial $124.5-million aid package extended by the Nova Scotia government to Pacific West was nearly derailed last month before being resuscitated less than 24 hours later, much to the relief of many on Cape Breton Island left in limbo since the mill was shuttered by its former owners,NewPage Corp., last year.
The $33-million sale of the mill to Pacific West was officially finalized Friday, much to the delight of many across the Strait of Canso also dependent on the region’s largest employer.
Dube said that after nearly a year of negotiations, the company was happy to be producing paper, noting that there is a “real team atmosphere and a real determination that we’re going to make sure that the mill can be a success.”
The provincial government spent millions over the last year keeping the mill resale ready in a “hot-idle” state, but that didn’t mean that the supercalendered machine, which makes paper used for magazines, catalogues and newspaper inserts, was ready at the flick of a switch.
“There’s so many different parts and pieces to a mill like this that all have to flow together for it to be successful, so we had some motor failures, pump failures, we had some plugged lines, we had a steam outage because of a power bump at the steam plant,” Dube said.
The equipment is now working well and workers will “continue to fine-tune and continue to speed things up until we’re back to full production,” he said.
About 550 unionized employees worked at the mill under its former operator, but less than half that — 229 workers — will be called back, with several more positions being contractual and management.
Dube said he expects to be at a full complement of employees by December, at the latest.
“Not everyone’s back that we’ve called back. Some people will be coming in during the month of October. Some people have decided not to come back. We’ve offered those jobs to others, and so they’ll be reporting as quickly as they can.”
The mill will be at full production in the next week, producing as much as 1,000 tonnes of paper a day.
Dube said the company has been fielding orders from across Canada, the United States and overseas since last month, with the first order shipping today.
That order is expected to be put to press by the customer Monday.
“So we’ve got a strong interest, and we’re very happy that the reputation of the paper and the employees here have allowed us to get back into the marketplace in a very positive way.”