ND Paper Acquires Water Quality Center

Paper Excellence announced the temporary curtailment of operations at its Catalyst Paper tiskwat mill. Severe challenges with local and global supply chain congestion exacerbated by BC’s recent atmospheric river event have caused significant paper inventory and movement problems for the company. The curtailment is targeted to begin in the week of November 22, 2021 and we will evaluate conditions for potential restart in early January 2022. Paper Excellence will endeavour to supply paper customers with production from Crofton and Port Alberni as it hopes for a speedy return to normalcy of supply chain performance. Crofton’s pulp and paper operations are currently curtailed until November 24 with its power boiler’s maintenance outage. The company continues to believe that Canada is a leader in the pulp and paper industry and remains committed to its long-term investments here.

The Paperworkers’ Union announced that the strike at most UPM’s Finnish mills will continue until 30 April 2022, unless new collective labour agreements are reached before that. Yet another extension of two weeks to the strike comes at a moment when negotiations between the union and UPM businesses continue intensively, and the conciliator has submitted a settlement proposal in the negotiations between UPM Pulp and the union. The parties must state their position on the proposal by 14 April. "Drafting of business specific collective agreements, led by the conciliator, has continued intensively during the past weeks. There is already a settlement proposal for UPM Pulp. Now it is important to focus on solving the open questions in the remaining UPM businesses", says Jyrki Hollmén, Vice President, Labour markets, UPM.

Crown Van Gelder starts production of Crown Letsgo 3rd generation grades as of 1 February 2021. The Crown Letsgo 3rd generation grades will bring visible quality improvements in the print result of presses operating with pigment inks and provide the opportunity to improve the Total Cost of Print by reducing ink consumption (5-12%) and save on drying energy*. Crown Van Gelder will switch production for the following grades: *Crown Letsgo Universal; *Crown Letsgo Matte; *Crown Letsgo Silk and Bright Silk, ColorPRO branded version. Inkjet paper makes perfect sense, even now “substrate independent” solutions are offered by press manufacturers. For anyone wanting best runnability on their press, there is no alternative to good quality inkjet paper.