Fueling its future | Biobutanol holds promise for the next phase of Old Town Fuel & Fiber

Mainebiz.biz
By Carol Coultas
Mainebiz editor

Four years ago, Dan Bird and Dick Arnold stood in an office within a 125-year-old paper mill and looked out the window to an empty plant. The room, once the controller’s office of previous occupant Georgia Pacific, was laid bare: no phones, no computers, no remnants at all of the Atlanta-based paper giant that vacated the Old Town mill to seek higher profits and lower energy costs in warmer climes.

The previous day, Bird and Arnold had attended a press conference with then Gov. John Baldacci, who announced new owners and new investment for the mill that at one time provided 400 jobs in this part of eastern Maine. It was up to the pair — both veterans of a changing paper industry — to bring the mill back to life.

“OK, I guess we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Bird recalls Arnold saying.

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