Duane Hicks
As a two-week shutdown of paper production continues until March 7 at the AbitibiBowater mill here, another two-week shutdown is in the cards for later this month.
“We have notified our employees that due to challenging market conditions, paper production at our Fort Frances operation will be temporarily down starting March 28 for 14 days,” Pierre Choquette, Abitibi’s manager of Canadian Public Affairs, said in an e-mail yesterday afternoon.
“This temporary downtime impacts 8,400 metric tons of white paper production,” he added.
Choquette added the mill’s pulp production also will be down during this period.
“We anticipate pulp and paper production to resume on April 11,” he remarked.
The company had announced in mid-February that paper production at the local mill would be halted from Feb. 21-March 7 due to poor market conditions.
