<B>G-P Permanently Closing Mich. Mill, Idling Machine</B>

Georgia-Pacific Corp. announced plans to permanently close one of its machines at its Nekoosa, Wisc., mill, and its Kalamazoo, Mich., mill Dec. 22. The Wisconsin machine had already been idled.

G-P has been looking to shed a number of its facilities as part of its acquisition of Fort James recently. While many of the operations that are to be sold involve in the commercial tissue market, the close of the one mill and the permanent shutdown of a machine remove printing and writing paper production from the market.

The company attributed changing dynamics for the closing, as well as older equipment that was not as cost efficient as newer machines. The move follows an industry trend toward shuttering older, less efficient equipment. While the board industry seems to be taking the lead in removing excess capacity, newsprint producers, pulp producers and other forest products operations have been taking downtime to balance supply and demand.

While the one G-P machine in Nekoosa is being closed, the mill will continue to run four other paper machines.

The Kalamazoo mill includes a deinking pulp operation and two paper machines. The machines produce around 130,000 tons of recycled printing and writing paper a year.

Close to 300 employees at the Kalamazoo plant will be affected by the closure.