Rumford Mill

Rumford Mill is a pulp mill and paper mill located in the United States town of Rumford, Maine. The mill has two kraft pulp lines and three paper machines. The mill produces 460,000 tonnes of kraft pulp and 565,000 tonnes of paper annually. The mill has 621 employees as of 2016.^[1] Now owned by ND Paper LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Limited, the mill is now known as ND Paper–Rumford Mill.

Rumford Mill
Location of Rumford Mill
Built	1901 (1901)
Location	Rumford, Maine, United States
Coordinates	44.5505°N 70.5408°W / 44.5505; -70.5408
Industry	Pulp and paper
Products	Paper
Employees	621 (2016)
Owner(s)	ND Paper (subsidiary of Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Limited)

History

The mill was established in 1901 by Hugh J. Chisholm. He had established the Portland and Rumford Falls Railway, which was completed in 1892 and aimed at exploiting the falls to manufacture paper.^[2] The Oxford Paper Company grew out of this mill and remained owned by the Chisholm family until 1967. Rumford was the sole manufacturer of US Post Office postcards, as well as the country's largest bookpaper manufacturer. Ownership passed to Ethyl Corporation in 1967, Boise Cascade Paper Company in 1976, Mead Corporation in 1996, Cerberus Capital Management as NewPage in 2005 and Catalyst Paper in 2015.^[3] In 2018 the mill was acquired by Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Limited.^[4][5]

In popular culture

The mill is the focus of Kerri Arsenault's part memoir part investigative reporting book of 2020 Mill Town. In the book, Arsenault shares her views about the health impacts from the mill.^[6][7]

See also

• Old Town paper mill, owned by the same company

References

1. Rumford Mill, Catalyst (2018 archive)
2. Johnson, Ron (1985). The Best of Maine Railroads. Portland Litho. pp. 25–26, 41, 53, 55, 76–77&111–112.
3. "Our history: Over a century of papermaking" (PDF). Catalyst Paper. January 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 July 2015. Retrieved 9 July 2015.
4. "Chinese company to buy Rumford paper mill". May 25, 2018. Archived from the original on September 14, 2018. Retrieved September 14, 2018.
5. "Sale of Rumford paper mill to Chinese company is completed". June 29, 2018. Archived from the original on September 14, 2018. Retrieved September 14, 2018.
6. Hanson, Alex (2020-11-17). "After the Factory Closes: On Kerri Arsenault's "Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains"". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 2023-08-25.
7. Cooke, Emily (2020-09-01). "Her Town Depended on the Mill. Was It Also Making the Residents Sick?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-08-25.