Sappi North America, Inc. has completed a year-long rebuild of Paper Machine 1 at its Somerset Mill in Skowhegan, Maine. In February 2017, Sappi Limited announced a major investment at the Somerset Mill to establish a strong platform for growth in paperboard packaging, while maintaining a leadership position in the graphic paper market, increasing annual production capacity at this mill to almost one million tons per year. These new paperboard grades provide luxury packaging and folding carton applications and complement the existing specialty packaging products for the food packaging and labeling industries.
“We are excited to bring Paper Machine 1 back online after a successful rebuild over the last year. Thanks to an extraordinary amount of work and effort by everyone involved throughout the year, we now look forward to bringing new, innovative paper-based packaging solutions to the market,” said Mark Gardner, President and CEO, Sappi North America. “Somerset is a world-class mill, and this rebuild will allow us to continue providing high quality packaging and graphics solutions to the market at the standard Sappi is known for.”
All of the new product lines will have global availability and provide convertors with superior color consistency, printability and downstream performance, the company reports.
