Town Of Alton Nh

Old Town mill finds new life in old product — wood pulp

OLD TOWN, Maine — The heavy, moist smell of chemical and paper dominates the air as decades-old machinery churns out hundreds of tons of pulp at the Fuel & Fiber mill.

In another part of the mill campus, where tissue paper machines once roared, relatively new machinery hums along. There’s a sugary smell in the air, reminiscent of a maple sugar shack.

It’s the past and the future tied inexorably together in the mill.

The old is the wood pulp process, which is producing 600 tons a day, a historically high amount, destined for markets across the United States and the globe. As part of that process, researchers have been extracting byproducts from the pulp, testing them in the on-site prototype biorefinery, making, among other things, fuel-grade biobutenol — a biofuel distilled out of wood pulp extract.

That’s the new and advanced markets and intellectual property that Fuel & Fiber is forging into.

Next month, the mill will begin construction on a production-sized biorefinery, capable of producing industrial levels of chemicals distilled out of the pulp process, including high-grade biofuels. The current model is about two stories tall, roughly 100 by 130 feet square. The next one will be about five to 10 times bigger, and should be complete within a year and a half or two years, said Daniel Bird, director of Old Town Fuel & Fiber.

“That’s the future of our company, the diversification of our revenue base,” said Bird.

When that operation is up and running, he expects to hire another 30 to 40 employees, Bird said, adding to the 205-person work force.

The new construction will be the latest step in what has been a staircase of recent events for the company. The mill has been around in various incarnations since it opened in 1860 as a sawmill. Georgia-Pacific closed the mill in March 2006, dismantling and removing the paper machines. Red Shield Environmental took over the mill later that year with the goal of aiming it at pulp and biofuel production.

Red Shield went bankrupt in June 2008, laying off about 160 workers. Later that year, it was purchased by Patriarch Partners, whose owner, Lynn Tilton, specializes in turning around failed manufacturing operations.

Patriarch Partners recently purchased a shuttered paper mill in Gorham, N.H., getting a paper towel-making paper machine up and running on Wednesday after eight months out of operation.

54 Hermit Drive, Alton, NH, 03810 - HomeSeekster

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Report of the Financial Standing of the Town of Alton, for the Fiscal Year Ending March 1st, 1888.

Report of the Financial Standing of the Town of Alton, for the Fiscal Year Ending March 1 1885

Atlantic reporter

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New Hampshire register, state year-book and legislative manual