Abitibi mill shutdowns widespread

Fort Frances certainly isn’t the only place where an Abitibi-Consolidated mill is taking downtime over the Christmas holidays, noted Susan Rogers, vice-president of corporate communications in Montreal.
Local workers learned late last week that the mill here will shut down Wednesday, Dec. 23 at the end of the night shift and won’t start up again until Monday, Jan. 4.
The kraft mill will shut down at the end of the day shift on Thursday, Dec. 24 but it will start up again Saturday, Dec. 26 at the beginning of the night shift.
In Kenora, the mill will be down Dec. 24 to Jan. 2.
Local mill manager Jim Gartshore has said earlier this month that most of Abitibi’s customers already had placed their December orders by the time the five-month strike by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union ended in November.
Rogers agreed the shutdowns were “widespread” among Abitibi’s mills.
“This is a two-pronged challenge,” she said. “We must regain our market share and regain our customers. And we have to remain very cognitive that there is a very much softer market out there.”
For the most part, the mills are only taking downtime over Christmas and New Year’s. But some, like the one on the Gaspé in Quebec, look like they’ll have a shaky winter ahead of them.
“[The Gaspé mill] is also a high-cost mill in our newspaper print portfolio,” said Rogers, noting it was the mill Abitibi warned early on would not do well if the recent CEP strike was a long one.
“It may only start up one machine,” she added.
And just because you’re back in business doesn’t mean everybody will welcome you back. Rogers said while the company worked hard to offset any effect the strike would have had on customer relations, the work isn’t over yet.
“I don’t think it’s ever easy, nor should it be, to maintain a customer relationship,” she stressed. “They have needs that have to be met and we’re the supplier.
“When their service isn’t there, they go looking.”