SUN JOURNAL • April 22, 2020
Many loggers and truckers around Maine who send their pulpwood to the Androscoggin Mill in Jay are uncertain what the future holds for them. There are a lot of indirect businesses that will also feel the squeeze. “It’s not going to be good,” Randy Kimball, co-owner of Kimball & Son’s Logging and Trucking in Poland with his wife, Chrissy, said Thursday. The mill restarted two paper machines on Wednesday. Without softwood pulp markets, logging contractors cannot ensure that they have a home for all low-value wood to allow higher value stems to grow, Chrissy Kimball said. “Add to all of this, the nosedive of new housing starts and the impact of the coronavirus and we could be in for a real disaster.” The only feasible option at this time for the softwood pulp is to chip it into biomass, but that isn’t sustainable.