It is good news that the Millinocket and East Millinocket plant may reopen but I am sure there are plenty of hurdles to cross first. The East Millinocket plant produced mostly newsprint and directory paper I believe.
With newspaper readership in serious decline and yellowbooks seemingly going away, I would think these two products are in serious decline so perhaps they have other products in mind for this plant. As for the Millinocket plant, it had a modern $100 million dollar plus paper machine put in that did gloss paper I believe for magazines and direct mail, but this product is very time sensitive (unlike directory and newsprint paper which often goes by rail), and thus often is trucked and not railed.
The big problem with the Millinocket plant is the fuel used there, oil, which is too expensive. There was talk of constructing a biomass plant there but this is 60M or so I have read. As for extending the natural gas line (the one connecting the Nova Scotia gasfield with New England), I had read it was not cost effective to bring these lines many miles into the state just for two plants to hook on. I would assume the Millinocket plant can not operate long term without access to natural gas or a biomass plant.
Perhaps folks dont know that a pipeline connects the two plants, it used to transport pulp slurry? between the two plants for processing. In the B&A days, a dedicated train transported wet lap, a pulp, from East M. plant to Millinocket to be made into a finished product.
Hope the plants survive for the workers sake, as well as the railroad.