Snowflake Mill was a

pulp mill A pulp mill is a manufacturing facility that converts wood chips or other plant fiber sources into a thick fiber board which can be shipped to a paper mill for further processing. Pulp can be manufactured using mechanical, semi-chemical, or fu ...

and

paper mill A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp, old rags, and other ingredients. Prior to the invention and adoption of the Fourdrinier machine and other types of paper machine that use an endless belt, ...

located in the US town of

Snowflake A snowflake is a single ice crystal that has achieved a sufficient size, and may have amalgamated with others, which falls through the Earth's atmosphere as snow.Knight, C.; Knight, N. (1973). Snow crystals. Scientific American, vol. 228, no. ...

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States. It is the list of U.S. states and territories by area, 6th largest and the list of U.S. states and territories by population, 14 ...

. The mill had two

paper machine A paper machine (or paper-making machine) is an industrial machine which is used in the pulp and paper industry to create paper in large quantities at high speed. Modern paper-making machines are based on the principles of the Fourdrinier Machi ...

s which produced 339,000 tonnes of newsprint and

uncoated fine paper Woodfree uncoated paper (WFU), uncoated woodfree paper (UWF) or uncoated fine papers are manufactured using wood that has been processed into a chemical pulp that removes the lignin from the wood fibers and may also contain 5–25% fillers. Both ...

. It sourced its fiber from two

deinking Deinking is the industrial process of removing printing ink from paperfibers of recycled paper to make deinked pulp. The key in the deinking process is the ability to detach ink from the fibers. This is achieved by a combination of mechanical ...

pulp lines. The mill had 293 employees as of 2014. Transport to and from the mill was carried out on the

Apache Railway The Apache Railway is an Arizona short-line railroad that operates from a connection with the BNSF Railway at Holbrook to the Snowflake Mill near Snowflake, Arizona, . The APA was acquired by Catalyst Paper from Abitibi Consolidated in 200 ...

. Founded in 1961, the mill was eventually owned by the

Stone Container Corporation Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation was a global paperboard and paper-based packaging company based in Creve Coeur, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois, with approximately 21,000 employees. In 2007, Smurfit-Stone was ranked 13 in PricewaterhouseC ...

. Ownership passed to

Abitibi-Consolidated Abitibi Consolidated Inc. was a Canadian pulp and paper company based in Montreal, Quebec. Abitibi-Consolidated was formed from the merger of Abitibi-Price Inc. and Stone Consolidated Corp. on May 29, 1997; the Company merged with Bowater in 20 ...

in 1998 and then to

Catalyst Paper Catalyst Paper Corporation is a pulp and paper company based in Richmond, British Columbia. It operates five pulp mills and paper mills, producing a combined 1.8 million tonnes of paper and 491,000 tonnes of market pulp annually. The mills most ...

in 2008. Due to increased

recycled paper The recycling of paper is the process by which waste paper is turned into new paper products. It has a number of important benefits: It saves waste paper from occupying homes of people and producing methane as it breaks down. Because paper fib ...

prices and a decline in the demand for newsprint, the mill was closed on 30 September 2012.

History

The mill opened in 1961 as a four-machine, multi-product plant. The mill was bought by Stone Container Corporation who also secured ownership of the Apache Railway. Wastewater from the mill entered Dry Lake until 1996, as well as into Twin Lakes from 1985. A wastewater treatment plant was installed in 1992. During this period the mill received its pulp from the

kraft process The kraft process (also known as kraft pulping or sulfate process) is a process for conversion of wood into wood pulp, which consists of almost pure cellulose fibres, the main component of paper. The kraft process involves treatment of wood ...

, a re-causticizing process and a chlorine-based bleaching process. Stone sold the mill and railway to Abitibi-Consolidated in 1998. Snowflake was an early user of deinking pulp and was amongst the first in the US to accept single-source recycling materials. This moves some of the recycling work from the recyclers, thus cutting their costs, in exchange for a stronger market position and lower raw prices. However, Snowflake Mill was stuck with a raw product flow which contained contaminants, such as plastic and metals. AZ 2010 878xxRP - Flickr - drewj1946

Catalyst Paper bought the mill in 2008. Catalyst took steps to upgrade the mill, including investments that allowed the plant to produce finer grades of paper. From 2008 the mill fell into a steadily more competitive environment. Prices of recycled fibers rose with increased demand from Chinese importers. Slack at quality controlling received papers at Chinese mills allowed for the export of a steadily more contaminated wastes, which again affected the quality and prices for Snowflake. This led to higher prices and lower quality for Snowflake Mill. The price of old newsprint increased by 163 percent from 2009 to 2012. Meanwhile, the newsprint demand fell sharply following the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

and the advent of increased online newspaper reading, with demand for newsprint declining with about ten percent per annum from 2009 through 2012.The mill was therefore permanently closed on 30 September 2012, after having provided a negative EBIDTA every year since 2009. Snowflake Mill was the sole large-scale recipient of waste paper in the Rocky Mountains Region. The closure had impacts on recycling companies throughout the region, who saw both reduced demand for waste paper—and hence low prices—as well as higher transport costs. Instead, paper must be transported to the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and W ...

, or exported to Mexico or China via

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

. By 2012, there were demands for higher intake quality at all mills, with the least contaminated paper waste being preferred by all recipients. Last days of the Apache (8028216723)

The assets comprising Snowflake Mill, including the Apache Railway, were sold to

Hackman Capital Hackman was a cutlery and cookware company founded in Finland in 1790. The Hackman brand is now owned by Iittala Group, which was acquired by Fiskars Corporation in 2007. In a 2008 survey which included both Finnish and international brands, it wa ...

for $13.46 million at an auction held on 17 December 2012. The two power plants were bought by Bob Worsley's Nova Power, costing $12 million.

Operations

Snowflake Mill is situated on a site situated west of

Snowflake, Arizona Snowflake is a town in Navajo County, Arizona, United States. It was founded in 1878 by Erastus Snow and William Jordan Flake, Mormon pioneers It has frequently been noted on lists of unusual place names. According to 2010 Census, the populati ...

. The mill had two paper machines and two deinking lines. The latter receive about 350,000 tonnes of recycled paper annually. Two paper machines produced 289 tonnes of newsprint and 48,000 tonnes of

annually based entirely on deinked fibers. The products were sold mostly within the

Southwestern United States The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorado, N ...

. Part of the mill site included two power stations. One was 24-megawatt

thermal power station A thermal power station is a type of power station in which heat energy is converted to electrical energy. In a steam-generating cycle heat is used to boil water in a large pressure vessel to produce high-pressure steam, which drives a st ...

run on biomass, the other rated at 80 megawatts burning coal. The mill's main means of transport was the

, a

short-line railroad :''Short Line is also one of the four railroads in the American version of the popular board game Monopoly, named after the Shore Fast Line, an interurban streetcar line.'' A shortline railroad is a small or mid-sized railroad company that oper ...

with the same owner as the mill. The trains were used to haul both old newsprint and coal to the mill, and manufactured paper from the mill. The railway runs to the

BNSF BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes tha ...

at Holbrook, intersecting with the former

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, and S ...

References

{{Catalyst Paper Pulp and paper mills in the United States White Mountains (Arizona) 1961 establishments in Arizona 2012 disestablishments in Arizona Catalyst Paper