Fortress Paper Ltd. » Fortress

FORTRESS PAPER ANNOUNCES EQUIPMENT PURCHASE FOR ITS THURSO MILL

carolinekeddy — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:10:45 +0000

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 7, 2010 – Fortress Paper Ltd. (“Fortress Paper” or the “Corporation”) announces the signing of a purchase agreement by its wholly owned subsidiary, Fortress Specialty Cellulose Ltd. (“Fortress Specialty”) with Stora Enso Oyi Cellulose Inc. to acquire digesters, specialized process equipment and other ancillary equipment to be used in the conversion of its Thurso mill to produce dissolving pulp.

The agreement provides for a purchase price of Euro 3 Million (CAD $3.8Million) and includes the purchase and delivery of a complete displacement cooking plant consisting of 3 batch digesters, liquor accumulators and various associated specialty process equipment and piping.

Chad Wasilenkoff Chief Executive Officer of Fortress Paper, commented: “After spending a considerable amount of time assessing and evaluating the equipment, we are very pleased to be able to secure this equipment. This equipment has operated for only 12 years and we are confident of its quality and performance, which should result in a material reduction in our overall capital investment requirements for the conversion to dissolving pulp. We also believe that by acquiring almost an entire batch cooking system, we reduce the process risk for this transformation. At this time it is still too early to determine the impact this new equipment will have on the completion date.”

About Fortress Paper

Fortress Paper is a leading international producer of security and other specialty papers and products. Fortress Paper operates three mills, the Landqart Mill located in Switzerland, the Dresden Mill located in Germany and the Fortress Specialty Cellulose Mill located in Quebec, Canada. Fortress Paper’s security papers include banknote, passport and visa papers and its specialty papers include non-woven wallpaper base products, and graphic and technical papers. Fortress Paper’s pulp business will include NBHK with the re-start of the Fortress Specialty Cellulose Mill with plans to convert this capacity into dissolving pulp production along with the construction of a biomass based cogeneration plant.

$18M infusion for Thurso pulp mill

carolinekeddy — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:34:07 +0000

The Thurso pulp mill is hoping for a second life with the approval by Hydro-Québec of a cogration project using wood waste to produce electricity for the state-owned utility.

Vancouver’s Fortress Paper Inc. will invest just $18 million of its own money for the $153 million conversion of the mothballed Thurso pulp mill near Gatineau, Que., analysts said Monday.

Fortress, best known for its cotton-based banknotes, security papers and wallpapers, announced the Thurso deal on March 19. Thurso initially will resume making hardwood paper pulp and the mill will then be converted to production of dissolving pulp, a highly-refined product used in viscose rayon cloth manufacture.

Fortress is paying about $3 million cash to the bankrupt Fraser Papers Inc. for the Thurso assets and will put up $15 million for the conversion program.

It will get a $102 million ten-year non-recourse loan from Investissement Quebec, the province’s industrial financing agency, $15 million from the issue of 7 per cent convertible debentures to an unidentified Quebec institution, $10 million from the Federal Green Transformation Program and $15 million from the Green Infrastructure Fund.

Dissolving pulp sells at a big premium over hardwood and softwood pulps for papermaking and global demand is strong and inventories low.

“Fortress’s timing is just right because it faces declining demand for banknotes with the spread of electronic transactions and the switch to polymer or plastic banknotes from the traditional cotton-based material,” said Paul Quinn, analyst with RBC Capital Markets. Also wallpaper markets are slack because of the recession.

The converted Thurso mill will have annual capacity of 200,000 tonnes of air-dried dissolving pulp and also a 25MW co-generation unit to reduce power costs.

Source: The Montreal Gazette

Helping Protect Financial Integrity

carolinekeddy — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:39:41 +0000

History has shown that our increasing complex financial system faces some unique challenges. Recently, the world of high finance collided with Main Street and the average investor was left to decipher why esoteric instrument such as derivates, swaps, counter-party agreements, packaged subprime loans and credit default swaps were impacting their investments and retirement savings. Overshadowed by these events, is an ongoing issue that continues to impair the integrity of the financial system and represents a potential danger to national economies – that is the issue of the counterfeiting of currency.

Counterfeiting, creating artificial money for financial gain and deceives others in making them believe that it is real, is as old as money itself. In the past, nations had used counterfeiting as a means of warfare, such as in the War Between the States in the USA in the mid-1800s and the Bernhard Operation in Europe during the Second World War. The idea was to overflow the enemy’s economy with fake banknotes, so that the real value of money was reduced; therefore, attacking the economy and general welfare of a society. Today, counterfeiting of currency impacts the integrity of the financial system, damaging economies and contributing to inflation that impacts the pocket books of consumers and savers worldwide.

Recent developments in photographic, printing, computer technologies, including digital image processing, high-performance colour printers and computer scanners and printers, have made the production of counterfeit money relatively easy, thereby increasing the potential threat. These new realities have driven the need for ever-improving security for the production of banknotes, and also for other secure documents such as passports, identification cards, visa labels cheques, tickets, certificates, transport documents, revenue stamps and brand labels.

The security of a banknote starts with the material upon which it is printed; a security paper possessing the characteristics that render it difficult to copy and that presents hurdles to illegal counterfeiting – a security paper that ensures authenticity. Fortress Paper’s Landqart facility offers solutions to meet these security demands. Landqart in is a leader on the development and production of security paper. Today, Fortress supplies bank note paper to more than 30 countries; including the Swiss Franc, the recognized benchmark for quality and security.

Source – Interpol