Pixelle Specialty Solutions LLC has confirmed plans to restart a paper machine in its Chillicothe, Ohio facility.
The company is investing $21m to upgrade and restart the PM24 and plans to hire 52 full-time employees to operate and maintain it. Pixelle will also fill 50 temporary positions to support construction and engineering requirements related to the restart.
“The current supply-demand balance in the market and our Ohio facility’s competitive, integrated cost structure has afforded us the opportunity to restart paper machine PM24 at the Chillicothe mill. 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,” said Timothy Hess, President and CEO. “We would also like to acknowledge 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.”
PM24 was originally built as a coated printing paper machine, upgraded most recently in the 1990’s. 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, including papers for food packaging. Pixelle expects the machine to be fully online shipping quality specialty papers in early Q1 2023.
