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We are still in safety month at Paperitalo Publications and this column is going to be a bit of a stretch to complete the month editorially. But indulge me for a few minutes and I'll bring us back around to safety.
There is a mill in Wickliffe, Kentucky, a place just south of the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. It started up around 1970. It made coated and uncoated free sheet. I worked there from October 1981 until December 1984. During that time, we rebuilt the machine and did a number of other significant capital projects. It was a very interesting location, geographically, in which to work. I lived in Cape Girardeau, Missouri and my daily commute involved crossing the Mississippi River, driving down through southern Illinois, through the city of Cairo, across the Ohio River and entering the mill.
This mill shut down in 2015, when it was not even fifty years old. Courtland, Alabama, a mill of a similar age, shutdown even earlier. I am told there may be over 100 families waiting around Western Kentucky, Southern Illinois and Southeast Missouri for a shining knight to ride into town and save them by restarting the mill.
There indeed may be some knights to ride into town--in other places I have derisively called these characters carpetbaggers--claiming to have a plan to save the mill. Don't believe them. Most likely, they have a plan to create a corporate structure that will suck money out of the community, the state and who knows where else, then leave town with most of the money and leave the hopes and dreams of local folks dashed. Don't believe me? Study what has happened in Maine, other northern tier states and the newsprint mills of eastern Canada. It is likely that the same thing will happen in other places if the communities allow it.
What is wrong with the Wickliffe Mill? My caveat is that my direct examination of the mill is close to 35 years old, although I did stop in a couple of times in the '90s and early 2000s to say hello.
First, then, it is in the wrong location. This was likely the very first mistake made at this site and one that haunts it still. The customers are not close by and neither is much of the wood supply. For much of its life, a significant portion of the wood was hauled by train from Mississippi to furnish fiber to the mill.
When built, the mill used over 20,000 gallons of water per ton of finished product. I have no idea what has been done about that, but it likely is not as closed as a modern mill would be. There is no turbine/generator, because TVA power was too cheap. Hence, the extraction of energy from steam was a bit out of kilter as compared to other mills.
The pulp mill was sized for two paper machines but two machines were never built on the site. This resulted in a surplus of pulp being run through a flash dryer, pulp that no one wanted to buy, but that it was necessary to make in order to keep the mill in energy balance and the pulp mill specifically running correctly. This problem extended back into the '70s. I don't think it was ever solved. I do know at one time the mill had unsold flash-dried pulp stored all over the Midwest.
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In the late '80s and early '90s a coater was built on site. The only place to put this coater was in line with where the second machine would be placed. Unfortunately, this coater was made to fit the width of the existing machine, which was of an uneconomical width (231") the day after it was built. The coater doomed any second machine to being in this same width.
Then there are matters such as black liquor which leaked into the ground. Maybe that has been cleaned up; I don't know. There were other spills I recollect around the site. Again, perhaps they have been cleaned up; if not they are a liability.
OK, 231" wide, can we do something with this? Recycled containerboard might fit the machine width nicely--2-out 110" rolls. Who knows if the machine is set up or how many changes it would need to make this work, but, look around the property. The effluent treatment plant would be unnecessary. The woodyard and pulp mill would need to be demolished. Same for the recausticizing area and the flash pulp dryer. There is way too much energy production capability. At least the recovery boiler needs to go, perhaps some of the other energy assets, too. Coater? Maybe you could add coating for a value-added product.
A large pulper to handle recycled fiber would need to be added.
To fiber the mill, you are going to have to haul OCC and Mixed Waste a long way--or maybe you could barge it in, but that will require infrastructure on site and perhaps elsewhere. Customers--they are mostly 150 - 600 miles away.
It's a bleak picture, I am afraid.
Now, I promised you I would bring this back to safety. Two points--people out of work are stressed and they tend to make mistakes. Out-of-work is one thing. Out-of-work and injured is another. That is point one. Point two: some folks will start their own businesses in order to stay in a community. Often short on resources and preoccupied with earning a living, all the safety principles they learned when they worked for a large company are forgotten.
These are dangerous times when you live in a community where a mill has shut down.
Be safe and we will talk next week.
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