Catalyst Revises Powell River, Snowflake Downtime Schedule

Catalyst Paper, Richmond, B.C., Canada, says that total downtime at its Powell River, B.C., and Snowflake mills (Arizona, USA) in the second quarter is expected to be 25 days rather than 14 days as previously announced. In addition, a cable equipment tray fire at the Powell River mill late Friday afternoon has idled the mill's No. 9 paper machine until later today or tomorrow (Friday) and the No. 10 paper machine until late next week as repairs are completed.

At Powell River, the total mill outage in May was increased from 5 to 10 days to enable additional repairs and testing of equipment in the main steam line serving the mill's operations. The outage also permitted the mill to complete the necessary tie-ins for the G12 energy project preventing further impacts on the mill's operation later in the year. The $12 million G12 project is funded through credits from the Federal government's Green Transformation Program.

As previously announced, three factors at Snowflake – limited availability of affordable waste paper, a total mill planned maintenance outage, and a storage yard fire – have increased mill downtime by six days in the quarter over the earlier forecast of nine days.

Catalyst Paper produces specialty printing papers, newsprint, and pulp. With four mills located in British Columbia and Arizona, Catalyst has a combined annual production capacity of 1.9 million metric ton.

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