Woodland Pulp, the largest employer in Washington County, is set to reopen next week after a monthlong pause in operations.
Spokesperson Scott Beal said several maintenance employees returned to work in late November, and 12 more were brought back last week to restart the bark-handling system.
All 38 St. Croix Chipping employees are expected to return Monday, Dec. 15, to start up the chip mill, and the Baileyville mill and chip plant is set to reopen at full capacity Wednesday, Dec. 17.
All 144 employees who were temporarily laid off in early November are expected to return by Wednesday, representing about one-third of the mill’s workforce.
Poised on the banks of the St. Croix River across from Canada, Woodland Pulp is one of Maine’s last major mills. It produces pulp sold to papermakers worldwide.
Beal previously attributed the “extended downtime” during the layoff period to falling prices in the global pulp market, not to the additional 10% tariff the Trump administration imposed on Canadian timber products in mid-October.
Dana Doran, executive director of the Professional Logging Contractors of the Northeast, told The Maine Monitor last month that the downturn in the global pulp market and recent tariff hikes are hitting Maine woodlot owners and logging contractors especially hard.
Woodland Pulp is one of six mills in the Northeast United States and Quebec that have recently paused or reduced wood deliveries, according to Doran. The landowners and contractors his group represents depend on mills for 40% of their timber sales, tying their success to the mills’ fortunes.
The economic output of Maine’s pulp and paper industry decreased by $390 million between 2010 and 2022. Doran said further mill closures, even those that are temporary, can trigger cascading effects on forest management, altering who is trained and employed in forestry and disrupting harvesting regimens across the state’s forests.
