PAGE 2 | November 20, 2020 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
NORTHWEST
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NEWSPAPER!
Corporate vandalism
The Newberg mill used to be where Oregon
sent its recycled paper. Now it’s being scrapped.
By Don McIntosh
Newberg’s recycled paper mill—where
workers had produced lumber, newsprint and
containerboard since the 1880s, is being taken
apart. Atlanta-based paper giant Westrock ac-
quired the mill in 2015 when it bought SP
Fiber. Westrock said it would make improve-
ments in the mill, but instead closed it almost
immediately, terminating 200 workers, most
of them members of Association of Western
Pulp and Paper Workers (AWPPW). On Sept.
17, 2020, Westrock sold the 200-acre mill site
lock, stock and barrel to St. Louis-based
Commercial Development Company Inc.
CDC is now liquidating assets at the site in
stages. You’ve already missed the chance to
bid on a 70-foot-long truck scale, but if you’re
in the market for an overhead bridge crane or
jib crane, you have until Dec. 1.
Before it closed, the Newberg mill was
turning 330,000 tons of recycled paper a year
into newsprint and light-weight container-
board, which is used in making corrugated
cardboard boxes. Those mill jobs paid $28 an
hour plus benefits, and they’re the type of job
that the Newberg area won’t likely see again,
says AWPPW President Greg Pallesen.
Pallesen did all he could to reopen the mill,
pitching it to potential buyers, and even filing
suit in 2018 to stop Westrock from acquiring
After buying and closing the Newberg mill, We-
strock destroyed millions of dollars of equipment,
drilling holes in giant rollers used in the paper-
making process. That would have resulted in a
felony conviction and prison sentence if vandals
or workers had done it. But the U.S. Justice De-
partment dismissed a union lawsuit charging We-
strock with anti-competitive practices— destroy-
ing capital equipment and curtailing production
to drive up prices.
another competitor, Kapstone. But the suit
failed, and Westrock rebuffed all offers from
companies that wanted to restart the mill, and
instead offered it for sale on condition that
the paper-making machines be destroyed.
“Two of the potential owners that I
worked directly with have operations
throughout the world,” Pallesen said, “and
both those companies said everywhere else
they operate, what Westrock did with New-
berg would have been against the law.”
“This is unfettered capitalism at its best:
EVERYTHING MUST GO: Looking to buy a
32-ton pair of natural-gas-powered Voyager
steam generators? What about a 1-Ton Coff-
ing Beam Hoist? The new owner of the
mothballed Newberg paper mill is selling off
all but its paper equipment to make way for
new riverfront development.
A company that buys competitors and has
no intention of restarting them. They spent
over $288 million to buy that mill, a mill in
Ohio, and a Georgia mill, and they closed
the Ohio and Newberg mill one week to the
day after they became owners.”