Midwest Paper, Formerly Appleton Coated, Reaches Milestone in Comeback from near Death

he former Appleton Coated mill, now called Midwest Paper Group, has reached a milestone that 10 months ago seemed virtually impossible.

The mill is now running all three of its paper machines around the clock, every day of the week.

The machines will operate continuously from now on, only silent for maintenance periods.

Anyone who sat through Appleton Coated’s courtroom receivership hearings last fall wouldn’t imagine this is the way it would turn out.  

Appleton Coated shut down in September, putting most of its 600 employees out of work.

In October, the mill was sold for $21 million to just one bidder, the combined Industrial Assets Corp. and Maynards Industries USA, two businesses that primarily buy and sell used machinery and conduct liquidations and auctions.

It appeared that Appleton Coated was destined to be scrapped.

But when the new buyers learned the mill could be valuable as an ongoing manufacturing plant, they invested many millions more to upgrade the facility. Machines restarted one by one beginning in December. About 310 employees were recalled.