EAST MILLINOCKET, Maine - More than a century of papermaking in the Katahdin region appears to be at an end, with the news yesterday that Great Northern Paper has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. Officials in East Millinocket remain hopeful that the bankruptcy filing will allow a new owner to buy the shuttered Great Northern mill for a reasonable price and put people back to work. But some say it's time to move away from paper-making and focus on other industries that can use the resources in Maine's north woods.
It's a little after eleven in the morning - less than 24 hours after Mark Marston heard, through news reports, that Great Northern Paper had filed for bankruptcy - and flatbed trailers, filled with logs, are rolling through East Millioncket. "As you can well see and hear, the logging industry is alive and well in the area," he says.
But it's been eight months since those logging trucks have made that turn, past where Marston is standing, and delivered their loads to the mill's wood yard. More than 200 workers have been out of a job since the mill closed in January.
"It's hard to think that there won't be a mill here, is what I'm struggling with now," he says. "It's not where I wanted to be at this point. I'm sure everybody in town feels the same way."
Marston is a selectman in East Millinocket. While officials in nearby Millinocket lost patience, long ago, with Great Northern Paper and its millions in tax debt and unfulfilled promises, Marston and others in East Millinocket have pledged patience.
"The selectmen decided to give them all the room they needed to possibly get a partner or investor to come in. Or a possible new owner," Marston says. "Always got to have that little bit of hope left - the mill's been down before. Hopefully the governor's office and the trustees will be able to work something out."
Great Northern Paper filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection Tuesday, listing more than 1,000 creditors and at least $50 million in debt. Great Northern may have been forced to act after three creditors reportedly filed a separate petition in federal court to force the company into bankruptcy. Chapter 7 allows a company to liquidate all its assets to pay off debt.
"I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner," says Peggy Daigle, the town manager in Millinocket, which has been fighting Great Northern to recover more than $600,000 in back property taxes. The town has been receiving the money, in installments, from a firm that conducted a recent auction of equipment at the Millinocket mill.
Throughout the state, paper-making has become an increasingly tough industry to make money in, due, in large part, to declining markets, foreign competition, high energy costs and digital substitution. Michael Madore is a Millinocket town councilor.
"The forest products industry is going to have to be diversified," he says, "and it's up to the local communities now to find that next avenue to pursue, as far as recapturing some manufacturing jobs up here - using wood, other than making paper, I believe."
Great Northern's bankruptcy filing calls into question the future of the company's plan to move in this direction by using its Millinocket site to begin turning wood into bio-coal pellets. Peggy Daigle says this emerging source of fuel provides the region the chance to produce something that "is probably the most futuristic, marketable product that could be out there, in competition with coal, to help some of these coal-fired industries that have to cut down on their air emissions. It's a perfect product for that. So I absolutely think that the black pellet industry has a place in Millinocket."
Daigle says as Millinocket recovers the rest of the money it's owed, it will be keeping an eye out for partners, eager to pursue bio-coal production and other projects.
