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The PM40 closed Friday, 3 February 2023, at 5614.

Get the latest PM40 updates by listening to the weekly Nips show and the PM40 Daily Show on Pulp & Paper Radio International.

In this issue of Disconnected Comparisons, we evaluate 3M and Resolute Forest Products.

The PM40 closed 3 February 2023 up 24.4% from the 4 February 2022 level.

Reported insider trading since the last issue of PaperMoney.

In the Wall Street Journal last Wednesday, there was a discussion on the decisions made by big oil. One had to read several stories to put it together, but the exercise was worthwhile and instructive. On the one hand, Chevron and Exxon have been following a strategy of staying the course and have been rewarded with eye-popping profits. On the other, BP has moved towards a mitigating climate change, ESG strategy and not performed so well. Just my luck, the one I owned in my little stock portfolio that my wife allows me to play with is BP. In the pulp and paper industry, senior management has the same sorts of decisions to make and I am not talking about climate change and ESG. What I mean is this--do you follow the crowd or do you chart your own path?

Family first, career comes in last

Andritz has received an order from Lipy Paper Mills Ltd. to supply wastepaper processing systems to the mill in Changine, Modonpur, Kanchpur, Sonargaon. These are the first Andritz RCF (Recycled Fiber) lines for Bangladesh.

ANDRITZ has received an order from Brazilian pulp producer Suzano to deliver a SulfoLoop concentrated sulfuric acid plant for its new pulp mill that Suzano is building in the municipality of Ribas do Rio Pardo, state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

Asia Symbol (Guangdong) Paper has successfully started up its tissue production line delivered by Andritz for its mill in Xinhui district, Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province, China.

Start-up is scheduled for early 2025.

Valmet will deliver a fiber fractionation system to Sichuan Tianzhu Bamboo Resource Co., Ltd in the Sichuan Province in China to improve mill efficiency. The value of the order will not be disclosed. The project is scheduled to be executed in the fall 2023.

Valmet will deliver bleached chemi-thermo mechanical pulp (BCTMP), evaporation and non-condensable gas (NCG) technology as well as an extensive automation solutions package for Stora Enso's Oulu mill in Finland. The delivery is part of Stora Enso's approximately EUR 1 billion investment to convert the remaining idle paper machine at their Oulu site into a high-volume consumer board production line.

Valmet has been selected to rebuild the cooking, fiberline and evaporation plant of Andhra Paper's Rajahmundry unit in India. The delivery is scheduled to take place in December 2023, and the start-up is planned for the first quarter 2024.

Valmet will supply an extensive rebuild for Sappi's Somerset paper manufacturing facility in Skowhegan, Maine, USA. Previously, Valmet rebuilt the paper machine 1 (PM1) and with its success, Sappi has chosen Valmet again to rebuild the paper machine 2 (PM2).

Voith has acquired shares in the sustainability start-up Yangi, headquartered in Varberg, Sweden. Yangi's ground-breaking technology emerges from 10 years of R&D within its sister company, The Loop Factory, which focuses on the megatrends of sustainability and circular economy. As a result, the leading full-line supplier Voith is investing in new, future-oriented technologies to further drive decarbonization in the paper industry.

For more than two years now, the Italian company Toscotec has been a subsidiary of Voith and since then has been serving the business with new lines and major rebuilds in the tissue paper sector for the entire Voith Group.

International Paper Company announced that it entered into an agreement to sell its 50% interest in Ilim SA to its joint venture partners for $484M. The company noted that the sale is subject to regulatory approvals in Russia.

The US Commerce Department plans to raise tariffs on two of Canada's largest timber companies, while reducing tariffs on most other Canadian producers.

The $50 million in upgrades include restarting the mill's C2 paper machine, which will now produce new water-resistant paper grades that are intended to replace single-use plastic products.

Domtar's Kingsport Mill recently produced its first 100% recycled containerboard. The milestone marks the culmination of a two-year, $350 million investment project to convert the former uncoated freesheet paper mill into Domtar's first 100% recycled packaging facility.

International Paper has announced formal plans to invest approximately $103 million to build and operate two natural gas power boilers to generate steam for its Containerboard Mill in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Construction is set to begin in the second quarter of this year and be fully operational by the end of 2025.

The roughly $200 million in state tax dollars earmarked for the Escanaba Mill will supplement a $1.06 billion investment by Swedish parent company Billerud to expand paper product production at the mill. The project would help the mill retain nearly 1,200 jobs at the 2,000-acre site in Wells and Escanaba townships in Delta County.

Start-up is expected in the first half of 2024.

Amcor announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Shanghai-based MDK. MDK generates annual sales of approximately $50 million and is a leading provider of medical device packaging, a key priority growth segment for Amcor.

Both Northstar and S3 serve multi-facility manufacturers and distributors across the food, consumer packaged goods, and industrial sectors with a centralized solution to manage and divert industrial waste streams into beneficial reuse applications. Northstar is a portfolio company of Ridgemont Equity Partners, a middle market private equity firm. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Stora Enso has signed an agreement to divest its paper production site in Hylte, Sweden and all its related assets to Sweden Timber, a Sweden-based sawmill and planing mill company. The enterprise value is approximately EUR 18 million. The completion of the transaction is expected in the first half of 2023. Concerning the Anjala paper site in Finland, Stora Enso has decided to discontinue the divestment process.

3M, maker of Post-it notes, industrial coatings and ceramics, is cutting about 2,500 manufacturing jobs worldwide as it looks to align itself with adjusted production volumes.

Holmen plans to invest in increased production and processing of wood products for sustainable construction.

Late last month, the company stated it would conduct a holiday shutdown through the month of January, but the work stoppage will now carry over through the entire month of February.

More than 100 workers in Port Alberni are the latest forest industry employees to face layoffs as Western Forest Products confirms it will not restart its sawmill in that Vancouver Island city.

Georgia-Pacific has scheduled the official retirement of its Quanah Acme Gypsum plant for March 1, 2023. In 2020, Georgia-Pacific announced it would be retiring the Acme plant and shifting production to other company facilities. Since then, the plant has been fully operational, producing the company's variety of gypsum products.

To better reflect its business focus and opportunity, UFP Industrial, LLC, a leading supplier of total packaging solutions, packaging logistics support and OEM components, and a subsidiary of UFP Industries, Inc. (Nasdaq: UFPI), is changing its name to UFP Packaging, LLC. The change is effective February 1, 2023.

Closures and cutbacks

More problems at Macon's Graphic Packaging facility sent more than 100 million gallons of polluted wastewater into the Ocmulgee River.

Port Hawkesbury Paper Wind has submitted a proposal to the province to construct a 29-turbine wind farm.

Smurfit Kappa has announced a €6 million investment at its Sanguesa paper mill in Spain, which will see the construction and installation of up to 12,000 solar panels on land adjacent to the mill. The solar panels will reduce CO2 emissions by over 3200 tonnes annually and provide significant cost savings.

Located in Kansas City, this new 150,000 sq. ft. millwork facility is expected to begin production in June 2023.

Nobody was injured but the mill was shut down as a result.

There were no injuries sustained from the fire.

Georgia-Pacific has given an update on a worker who was critically injured in a Thursday morning, Jan. 19, incident at the company's Pineland facility.

Fibre-based consumer packaging leader Graphic Packaging International ('Graphic Packaging') has announced it is moving its Bristol, UK beverage packaging manufacturing operations to a new, state-of-the-art facility nearby, creating up to 30 new jobs in the process.

Mercer International Inc. reports that, due to a lack of appropriate fiber availability, its Celgar mill in British Columbia, Canada, is planning to take approximately three weeks of downtime. This curtailment is expected to commence in March 2023.

Ohio-based printing company Multi-Color Corporation announced that it plans to permanently close its Menomonee Falls facility, resulting in layoffs for all 29 employees, according to a letter the company sent to the Department of Workforce Development's Dislocated Worker Unit.

The Land and Environment Court in Vänersborg has communicated its decision to grant a permit for increased production output at the Nordic Paper plant in Bäckhammar, Sweden. The new permit allows for Nordic Paper to, after investments, increase its production of paper pulp in Bäckhammar by more than 20% and of kraft papers by more than 10%. The company is now going to analyse the details of the permit in order to determine any impact on potential investment alternatives.

WestRock union workers have been on the picket line since Oct. 6th.