A federal judge has given Verso Paper the green light to sell its shuttered mill in Bucksport to a scrap metal company, but he encouraged the two parties to meet with Gov. Paul LePage and potential buyers who want to restart the mill and “work something out.”
The Bangor Daily News reported that U.S. District Judge John Woodcock refused to halt the sale, an order that was being sought in a lawsuit filed last month by the International Association of Machinists over possible antitrust violations. The union will be able to appeal the decision to the 1st Court of Appeals in Boston, though it’s currently unclear if it will.
Though Woodcock said in his 73-page decision that the union’s lawyers “have not met their burden to demonstrate a strong likelihood of success on the merits of their claims,” he suggested that some resolution could be reached if Verso and Canadian scrap metal company American Iron & Metal met with state officials and potential buyers.
Woodcock wrote, “… the court wondered whether some resolution could be arrived at, perhaps with the assistance of state officials, in which Verso and AIM walked away with the benefit of their negotiated contract, one of the interested purchasers bought the mill and operated it to make paper, and perhaps not all, but some of Verso’s approximately 500 employees remained employed at Bucksport.”
A New York-based affiliate of an international papermaker, along with representatives from New York-based Minimill Technologies and Pennsylvania-based Fibre Technologies LLC have all expressed interest in buying and restarting the mill for new markets.
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