UPDATED 3:30 p.m. Thursday
After more than 85 years in operation, the Minas Basin Pulp & Power containerboard mill in Hantsport is shutting down, sending nearly 100 people to the unemployment line.
A letter was circulated to all employees and posted on the mill’s website Thursday in which Archie MacPherson, president and CEO of parent company Scotia Investments Ltd., said the facility was closing in December because it had reached “the end of its cycle” and that “long term sustainability cannot be achieved”.
The decision to close came after restructuring its operations and adjusting its workforce last year.
“However, notwithstanding all of the things that we have done, we’re experiencing forces that we are unable to overcome, structural marketplace changes, increased competition, rising costs of operations, so that is the reason that we made the decision,” Robert Patzelt, senior vice president of corporate development, said in an interview.
Those challenges, he said, include rising costs of operations, increased competition, structural changes, and economic conditions in the marketplace.
While the company has worked with the provincial government in the past to find ways to keep the mill competitive, they will not be doing so this time around.
“That (government help) has resulted in us being successful in keeping the mill open until now,” Patzelt said. “The reality is is that market forces affecting our mill and the segment in which we operate are different and additional money from the government is going to be inadequate to overcome the structural and economic challenges that this mill faces.”
The closure will affect 135 employees, but Patzelt said they will transition about 40 employees to its CKF Inc. paper plate facility, also in Hantsport.
The company has been working with the remaining employees during the transition and “been in touch with other employers in the region as many of our employees have excellent qualifications that we think would be valuable assets to their organizations.”
Minas Basin produces 100 per cent recycled paperboard products such as linerboard and coreboard and has a production capacity of 100,000 metric tonnes per year.
Patzelt said that, at this point, the company is unsure what will becomeof the facility itself beyond the middle of December, when it plans to shut it down.
But he said that Scotia Investments is working to expand operations at the CKF plant.
“We’re not leaving the paper packaging industry, we’re just getting out of this specific segment of the paper making industry and this will allow us to invest in those growth opportunities that provide the greatest benefit to the company and our employees and the province,” he said.

 (Question: how will this affect Hantsport? )