PAPER CLIPS

BRIEF NEWS AND REVIEWS FROM AROUND THE INDUSTRY

* Smurfit-Stone Container recently installed five "technologically enhanced" sorting systems at its recycling plants in Oakland and Torrance, CA; Jacksonville and Tampa, FL; and Seattle, WA, according to a report in Reliable Plant Magazine. The company also entered partnerships with Waste Services and Advanced Disposal Services to increase recovery of recyclable products. "Customers are demanding a more consultative, total solutions approach to their recycling and waste management needs," said Smurfit-Stone senior vice president and general manager Mike Oswald. Oswald said that enhanced system technology makes it easier and more economical to take single-stream loads, and recover paper and other recyclables from the municipal solid waste stream. Placed in front of landfills or at municipal waste transfer stations, enhanced sort systems process solid waste loads using a series of mechanically separating screens, discs, magnets and air currents to separate various recyclable materials into their base components, Smurfit-Stone said.

* PCA and the United Steelworkers Union (USW) tentatively agreed on a five-year master economic and security umbrella agreement that covers 1,200 workers at mills in Valdosta, GA, Counce, TN, Filer CHy, and Tomahawk, Wl. Mill workers will vote on the pact. "This agreement lays the foundation for our members' economic security during a time when the paper industry is undergoing massive change because of globalization," said USW international president Leo Gerard in a release. The master umbrella agreement for the PCA mills paves the way for an agreement that would be similar in structure at more than 20 PCA corrugated converting operations where USW represents workers.

* Turning to the Internet to get its paper industry message out, NewPage launched a bi-weekly podcast focusing on ethical and environmental stewardship. The company's campaign website www.PaperTellsAStory.com also includes details of the carbon footprint generated by paper imports from China, and highlights ecosystem damage from illegal Indonesian logging that feeds fiber into the Asian export supply chain. Podcasts are posted every other Thursday at noon PST and are available at the website or through iTunes.

BRIEF NEWS AND REVIEWS FROM AROUND THE INDUSTRY

* North America's largest coasted papemnaker, NewPage, filed an amended prospectus for its Initial Public Offering (IPO) with the US sec on July 11. The price per share and number of shares to be offered was not specified. "Apart from making a few corrections and updates, it implies to me that NewPage is getting somewhat closer to doing the deal," commented one analyst. Shares of the No. 2 ranked coated paper producer, Verso, debuted on the New York Stock exchange on May 15 and generated $168 million from an offering of 14 million shares at $12 apiece.

* UPM-Kymmene is exporting pulpwood from Crown land in New Brunswick to Nova Scotia, Quebec and Maine, local reports said. Following the permanent closure last year of UPM's Miramichi lightweight coated paper mill, the company gained permission to cut wood on province-owned land until the end of August. A provincial cabinet order is now allowing the pulpwood to be exported because of the reduced demand from pulp mills for the wood in New Brunswick.

* A British Columbia judge gave an employees group one more week to develop a plan for buying the bankrupt Pope & Talbot Harmac pulp mill in Nanaimo, BC, and ordered the mill shut to reduce costs, The Canadian Press said. An official with the court-appointed receiver, PricewaterhouseCoopers' Mike Vermette, said the receiver will also now consider bids that do not include running it as a pulp mill. He said about four parties are interested, with uses ranging from bioenergy to using the equipment in other industries.

* Weyerhaeuser extended the deadline to an unknown date for possibly selling its 140,000 tonnes/yr Cosmopolis, WA, specialty pulp mill to Evergreen Pulp, a unit of China's Lee & Man Paper. "We feel very comfortable that a deal is coming together in the short-term," Weyerhaeuser official Kristin Sawin told the Grays Harbor Daily Herald newspaper on Thursday. "It's not our issues that are still being negotiated." The Weyerhaeuser-Evergreen negotiations are held up because of talks involving Evergreen and the Grays Harbor pubik utility district (PUD), which is buying the mill's power plant for $17 million and plans to spend $10 million more on power plant upgrades.

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