Press Box

Papier Masson Ltée invests $150 million in its mill at Masson-Angers

Masson-Angers, April 7, 1999. Papier Masson Ltée today announced that its Board of Directors, who met week last in Montréal, approved a project to modernize the newsprint mill at Masson-Angers, including the construction of a thermo-mechanical pulping (TMP) facility costing over $150M. This major, long-awaited investment will ensure the mill’s long-term operations.

Owned until quite recently by Maclaren, this mill was in need of a large investment in order to modernize its pulping process, which is the first of the two major steps in newsprint production. While the mill has one of the most productive paper machines in the industry, the facility for converting wood and wood chips to pulp dated back to the 1950s and 1960s. The previous owner, Foresterie Noranda (Nexfor), did not want to invest this kind of money and this is likely one of the reasons it sold this mill. We note that the modernization project has been discussed for several years and that the mill directors had proposed it several times to the former owners but without success.

André Legault, Vice-President, Operations, at PML, stated, “This was the best news heard in a long time for the mill at Masson-Angers. We have been waiting for this investment for years because the competition, who uses this technology, is improving its product much quicker than us in addition to having lower production costs. This investment will put us back in the running.”

However, the good news had its downside. Mr. Legault also said “There are two sides to the coin. The positive is that this new technology will create job security for 265 employees at Masson-Angers for a good number of years, but the flip side is that this project will mean cutting 185 jobs. Although everyone has known this for several years, the announcement still comes as a shock to employees and the community. This is definitely not something that will be easy to live through.”

The mill’s management intends, however, to make every possible effort to lessen the impact of these layoffs. In the coming weeks, parity committees will be set up with Local 11 of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP-FTQ) and Local 1388 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW-CLC) in order to find alternatives for affected employees. Already several ideas have been put forward and will be discussed by these committees. According to Jacques Thériault, Director of Human Resources, it is important to start exploring solutions even now. Although the new TMP facility is not expected to start up until mid June 2000, there will be a lot of staff changes, and plans have to be made now. “We are not starting off from scratch. In 1993 and 1998 we negotiated specific clauses for this kind of situation. In addition, we have set up a complete range of services that we will be able to offer to the employees to help them in their transition. But implementing everything is quite a challenge! We are confident, however, for we have been through difficulties in the past and have found the solutions we needed.”

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