From Staff Reports
LUKE, Md. — The entire Luke mill will be taking another market-related downtime the week of July 6, according to an announcement Monday by Gary Curtis, Luke Mill manager.
The week-long shutdown will be the third this year. The first shutdown, during the week of April 6, only affected a portion of the mill's total workforce. The second shutdown, however, involved the entire plant and was held in May.
Just a week following that second halt in production
NewPage announced that its first-quarter earnings were down $468 million, or 39 percent, from the same period in the previous year.
Mark A. Suwyn, executive chairman of NewPage, cited the economic downtown and a sharp decline in print advertising as the reason.
“Demand for coated paper has declined more than 30 percent compared to last year, and our customers — mostly printers, magazine and book publishers, and catalogers — continue to face similar pressures in their businesses,” he said.
Curtis said some maintenance work will be completed during the latest outage, and a skeleton crew of employees will be assigned to perform security and fire watch activities.
Full details of what maintenance work will be done during the outage are still being finalized, but it is anticipated that approximately 750 employees will be affected. Those employees will have the choice of taking vacation or time off without pay during the one-week period.
“These actions reflect the company’s determination to manage our operations effectively and efficiently in order keep the overall business competitive and sustainable for the long term," stated Curtis.
The company’s Converting Facility near McCoole will not be affected by the outage.
Headquartered in Miamisburg, Ohio, NewPage Corporation is the largest coated paper manufacturer in North America, based on production capacity, with $4.4 billion in net sales for the year ended
Dec. 31, 2008.
The company’s product portfolio is the broadest in North America and includes coated freesheet, coated groundwood, supercalendered, newsprint and specialty papers. These papers are used for corporate collateral, commercial printing, magazines, catalogs, books, coupons, inserts, newspapers, packaging applications and direct mail advertising.
NewPage owns paper mills in Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Nova Scotia, Canada. These mills have a total annual production capacity of approximately 4.4 million tons of paper, including approximately 3.2 million tons of coated paper, approximately 1.0 million tons of uncoated paper and approximately 200,000 tons of specialty paper.
Luke, Md. —
