The paper mill in Madison, which closed in May and put about 215 people out of work, has been sold to a buyer with plans to revive it as an industrial property.
The owners of Madison Paper Industries, UPM-Kymmene Inc. and Northern SC Paper Corp., announced the sale of the site Friday in an email statement. The new owner is a joint venture involving New Mill Capital Holdings of New York, Perry Videx of Hainesport, New Jersey, and Infinity Asset Solutions of Toronto. The purchase price was not disclosed.
Perry Videx and Infinity Asset Solutions are brokers and auctioneers of industrial equipment and property.
The new owners plan to sell certain mill assets that are no longer usable on the property, and demolish some structures that are obsolete. Once that process is complete, the property will be remarketed for alternative industrial uses.
Given the site’s abundant supply of both power and natural gas, as well as a clear height of over 50 feet, the property is a uniquely attractive asset for a variety of heavy industries, Gregory Schain, principal of New Mill Capital Holdings, said in the news release.
“We are excited to be the new owners of the Madison mill and look forward to working with local and state officials to identify new uses for the mill site,” Schain said. “Bringing new economic life to the property is a key component to this investment for us, and we feel the site’s ample infrastructure and the strong area labor force will be attractive for new industries.”
The company statement also said the mill’s hydropower assets would be marketed separately from the other former mill property and mill equipment.
Madison Town Manager Tim Curtis said despite the end of the town’s legacy of papermaking, the news was not all bad. He said he has had “very positive conversations” with Schain at New Mill Capital.
“They’ve had some experience with redeveloping industrial sites in the past,” Curtis said. “They were the ones that redeveloped the Biddeford Hostess manufacturing plant and leased that to FedEx just a couple of years ago. We’re excited about the new opportunities; we’re kind of sad that our heritage as a papermaking town is gone, and it doesn’t look like it’s coming back.”
Curtis said the site will not be redeveloped into a papermaking facility, but into “some sort of industry” and there are plenty of options to look at.
Leslie Amoils, president of Infinity Asset Solutions, said in a statement that the joint venture specializes in sales and partnerships that put idled industrial assets back to productive use. His comments were echoed by another partner in the transaction.
“Because most of the mill was built in 1980, both the buildings and equipment assets are among the newest of any shuttered paper mill in the Northeast,” said David Goodman, executive vice president of Perry Videx. “Additionally, they have been maintained extremely well over the years.”
The mill produced supercalendered paper used for magazine publishing and has been in Madison since 1978. It was producing about 195,000 tons of paper annually at the time the closure was announced earlier this year.
Russ Drechsel, president and CEO of Madison Paper, said he, too, mourns the loss of the local papermaking identity.
“It’s sad for the state of Maine to lose such a large backbone employer for Somerset County and for the area,” Drechsel said by phone Friday, the last business day of 2016. “That feeling hasn’t changed since the closing announcement.”
Drechsel said he is staying on to continue work trying to sell the hydroelectric assets. He said he is not looking at the option of staying on at the site for the long term.
“We have some tasks to finish for our ownership, and that’s my objective at this point,” he said. “I have a short-term focus at the current time, and there’s a lot to do.”
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