PORT ANGELES — Recycled newspaper on Vancouver Island is no longer being processed in British Columbia, and the Nippon Paper Industries USA Ltd. paper mill in Port Angeles is one place it could end up.
After the recent closure of Catalyst Paper’s de-inking plant in Port Coquitlam, Victoria Metro Waste Paper Recovery is sending its recycled newsprint elsewhere.
“We have bought paper from them, but probably not for a year, year and a half,” said Harold Norlund, Nippon Paper mill manager.
“They had a contract with Catalyst. … But yes, they’ve shut that plant down indefinitely, so we don’t know how many months that is.”
Norlund said the closure of Catalyst mill could present an opportunity for Nippon.
“We may or may not buy from Metro in the future,” he said.
“It depends on price, but it also depends on them. They may chose to sell to China as a lot of people have done,” Norlund said.
“Certainly, we’re always in the business for local available recycled paper.”
When the paper was shipped to Nippon in the past, its was carried on the MV Coho ferry, Norlund said.
About half of the 1,400 tons of newsprint picked up monthly through the Vancouver Island recycling program had been sent to Catalyst Paper’s de-inking plant in Port Coquitlam prior to the closure.
The rest already was going to mills in the United States, according to the Times Colonist in Victoria.
“It is a bit of an inconvenience, but it is not the end of the world,” Doug Stevens, plant manager of Metro Waste Paper Recovery, told the Victoria newspaper on Wednesday.
Metro has a contract with the Capital Regional District that runs until May 2012 to handle all the newsprint collected through the blue-box recycling program.
It is standard practice in the industry to shop around to find out which mills in British Columbia and the western U.S. are offering the best price on newsprint, Stevens said.
“We have been doing it all along from the beginning,” he said. “We have a good variety of mills to ship to.”
Metro ships newsprint to the Blue Heron Paper in Oregon City, Ore., and SP Newsprint in Newberg, Ore.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.