Old Mill, New Market—TimberHP Brings a Paperless Future to Madison
For many Mainers, the 18-month period between 2014 and 2016 felt like the end – full-stop, definitive – of an era. Five paper mills fell like dominoes, one after another. The names of the towns rolled off the tongues of local news anchors: Old Town, Millinocket, Bucksport, Lincoln, Madison. Elected officials promised help in the form of retraining the workforce, but there was little they could do or say to ease the shock; in most cases, the mills had been the largest employers in town for several generations, and the taxes they paid funded such essentials as local schools and emergency services.
Once deemed Maine’s “imperial industry,” the state’s pulp and paper business had teetered for decades, beset by multiple woes, including declining demand for newsprint and coated papers, losses in raw materials thanks to insect infestations in northern forests, competition from new mills both foreign and elsewhere in the United States, and decisions made in boardrooms far from the mills – and the communities they supported. While the dominolike debacle didn’t entirely stop papermaking in Maine, the six paper mills that survived after 2016 represented a husk of an industry that shed 22 mills in the state over little more than a decade.
Published in Northern Woodlands on June 20, 2024.
