NewPage Corporation

Verso Corporation, a leading North American producer of printing and specialty papers and pulp, has announced the completion of its acquisition of NewPage Holdings Inc. The transaction, valued at approximately $1.4 billion, originally was announced on Jan. 6, 2014.

NewPage Corporation, a leading producer of digital coated papers based in Miamisburg, Ohio, recently announced the addition of two new sheet sizes to its economy digital coated paper brand, Blazer Digital, specifically for HP Indigo 10000 digital presses.

Verso Paper says it may be unable to complete a $1.4 billion acquisition of its rival NewPage Holdings because of low participation in a crucial exchange offer, in which the company would exchange existing debt for another class of debt.

Based on the amount of debt offered up in the early part of the exchange period, Verso Paper says it is concerned that the effort won't succeed.

In the long, painful story of the paper industry's transformation, the news this month that NewPage Holdings had been sold to Memphis, Tennessee-based Verso Paper counts as a positive development.

On the other hand, the news Saturday that the activist hedge fund that pressured Wausau Paper into selling its mills in Mosinee and Rhinelander now wants the company out of Wisconsin underscores the difficult, sometimes wrenching transition paper makers are still undergoing here.

Verso Paper Corp., a leading North American producer of coated papers, and NewPage Holdings Inc., a leading producer of printing and specialty papers, have entered into a definitive agreement under which Verso will acquire NewPage in a transaction valued at $1.4 billion.

NewPage signed an agreement with Omya, a producer of minerals and pigments, to build a precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) plant at the Escanaba, Mich. mill site.

NewPage said the new on-site PCC plant has yet another benefit; it will use carbon dioxide generated at the paper mill in the process of making PCC, which reduces the environmental impact and carbon waste of the paper mill.

On top of all that good news, the plant will create seven local jobs.

NewPage paper company will temporarily lay off about 120 hourly maintenance workers (at its Rumford, ME mill) next week, mill spokesman Anthony Lyons said Tuesday.

A couple of years ago, the company idled some of its paper machines at Rumford Paper, temporarily laying off between 50 and 300 workers.

The latest layoffs come four months after NewPage cut 5 percent of its workforce nationwide. The cuts resulted in nearly four dozen mill workers from the Rumford mill losing their jobs.

Miamisburg, Ohio-based NewPage Corporation has upgraded its Digital Coated Paper line with a new look and new paper. Sterling Premium Digital and Sterling Premium Digital for HP Indigo are the new digital premium papers without the premium price tag.

Miamisburg, Ohio-based NewPage announced extensions to its Futura® and Productolith Pts. Digital® paper lines.

Miamisburg, Ohio-based NewPage, a leading producer of printing and specialty papers in North America, has launched its much talked-about TrueJet™ Digital Coated Papers.