AbitibiBowater halts work at 5 plants
4 plants are in Canada
AbitibiBowater announced Thursday it will suspend operations at five plants, four of them in Canada.
The shutdowns start Oct. 31 and will continue for an indefinite period. Its Canadian union said the move will affect 1,500 jobs.
AbitibiBowater — based in Montreal — will completely shut down its digital paper plant in Beaupre, Que., resulting in 340 lost jobs.
The company will also shut one of two newsprint plants in Clermont, Que., and lay off another 120 workers. In Fort Frances, Ont., 75 people will lose their jobs as a commercial printing paper closes.
The company announced it will cut production in half at it newsprint operation In Brooklyn, N.S., and its 300 employees there will work reduced hours. In Coosa Pines, Ala., the firm will lay off 85 people.
Company restructuring
AbitibiBowater spokesman Pierre Choquette blamed a worldwide drop in demand for all types of paper.
"For the commercial printing papers, such as the [kind] produced in Beaupré, we're talking about a 20 per cent drop since the beginning of the year," said Choquette.
Choquette said the company has gone from 11 operating mills to seven in the last two years. About 800 of AbitibiBowater's workers have lost their jobs.
The closures "are disasters of historical proportions for communities that have been a mainstay of the Canadian forest industry," Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, said in a release.
Coles said the closures could have been prevented if the Canadian government had put in place a program of loan guarantees for forest companies. The union wants a federal-provincial task forces to be appointed to find new owners for the closed mills.
AbitibiBowater has been restructuring since April, and the company warned weeks ago that operations could be cut.