MORNING SENTINEL • April 30, 2024
Sappi North America’s $418 million expansion of its Somerset Mill in Skowhegan to increase capacity on the machine to produce solid bleached sulfate paperboard products is continuing on schedule. The switch is part of the company’s efforts to reduce its reliance on other paper products. The mill employs about 754 people. The expansion will add a “modest” number of new jobs. Sappi also operates mills in Westbrook, Maine; Cloquet, Minnesota; and Matane, Quebec. Maine’s forest products industry has seen change. TimberHP brought back manufacturing to the Madison Paper Industries mill that closed in 2016. In Jay, a company that manufactures a product similar to particleboard announced in March its plans to reopen the former Androscoggin Mill, which stopped producing paper in March 2023. Later that month, ND Paper in Rumford announced it planned to temporarily shut down one of its papermaking machines.