Willamette purchases Stone Container pulp mill

Smurfit-Stone Container's idle 290,000 mtpy market pulp mill in Port Wentworth, Ga., was purchased by Willamette Industries and will restart the operation as a hardwood pulp operation before October 2000. Its sale is due before the end of June 2000. Under a plan approved by its board, Willamette will also build a new uncoated freesheet paper machine at Kingsport, Tenn., by mid-2002, and will use some of Port Wentworth's 900 mtpd of hardwood pulp until a new pulp mill is built at Kingsport in late 2003.