Staff
The downtime scheduled at AbitibiBowater’s kraft and paper mill here next week (Nov. 23-29) has been postponed, the company reported late yesterday.
“We got some orders so we managed to push the shutdown off,” mill manager John Harrison said this morning, adding the order situation continues to be reviewed and may require downtime before the end of the year.
“It still could be coming the week after or the week after that,” he noted.
The company had announced last Friday morning that due to poor market conditions for both kraft and paper products, all production at AbitibiBowater’s operations here would be shut down for one week, starting Sunday, Nov. 23.
In other news, Harrison said the final external component of the biomass boiler—a white component located on the north side with a steam stack coming out of it called the precipitator—has been completed.
Harrison explained exit gases from the boiler go down through the precipitator, where any fine particulate matter is filtered before the gases are emitted through the precipitator stack.
He noted the boiler will see “first fire” next week, which is the first time they fire off the natural gas burners in the boiler.
“That let’s us check out the fuel handling system and make sure that things are working right,” said Harrison. “Then we’ve got some more insulating to finish on the boiler, and then we’ll be making steam in the boiler and blowing out the first of the steam to clean out tubes, etc.
“Then, we’ve got probably a week or two of final electrical and mechanical completion.
“We plan on having biomass in the boiler before Christmas,” Harrison added. “We expect to be fully operational in January.”
