Pixelle to restart Ohio line

Pixelle Specialty Solutions LLC, based in Spring Grover, Pennsylvania, has announced plans to restart a paper machine at its Chillicothe, Ohio, facility. The company says it is investing $21 million “to upgrade and restart” the No. 24 paper machine (PM24) in Chillicothe.

A spokesperson for Pixelle says PM24 “tend[s] to include 30 percent postconsumer” recovered fiber when it is running, adding that “depending on customer demand, Pixelle has the ability to run a higher percentage of recycled fiber. Since PM24 is not yet running, it’s hard to say exactly what Pixelle will put [into] the machine until production begins to start scheduling.”

“The current supply-demand balance in the market and our Ohio facility’s competitive, integrated cost structure has afforded us the opportunity to restart PM24 at the Chillicothe mill,” Pixelle President and CEO Timothy R. Hess says. “This rebuilt machine will add 75,000 tons per year of capacity to serve our customers in the food packaging, commercial inkjet and other specialty paper segments. These are growing attractive markets where Pixelle has leading positions.”

Hess adds, “We would also like to acknowledge [economic development agency] JobsOhio for an economic development grant that will support an employee training program to provide workers with the skillsets required to operate the paper machine safely and efficiently.”

Pixelle says it plans to hire 52 full-time employees to operate and maintain PM24 and anticipates creating about 50 temporary positions “to support construction and engineering requirements related to the restart.”

According to the papermaker, PM24 originally was built as a coated printing papers machine, upgraded most recently in the 1990s. Pixelle idled the machine in 2017 based on declining supply-demand market dynamics at the time. “Several upgrades in the current rebuild will enable Pixelle to produce an attractive product mix for its customers,” the firm states.

Pixelle also has a coating facility in Ohio, mills in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and a mill in Maine scheduled to close early next year. The firm says it expects PM24 in Ohio to be fully operational early next year.