For a group of workers and businesses tied to a Perry mill, hope has become a waiting game as talk about their economic future goes on behind closed doors.
Bob Cate, a former plant manager at the Foley Cellulose Mill, said Monday its closure was big news last week during “Dissolving Pulp Day” at the London Pulp Week Symposium 2023.
The mill is one of seven in the world capable of extracting cellulose – the basic structural component of plants’ cell walls – from pine and dissolving it into a chemical used to manufacture electronics and as a food additive.
Mill owner Georgia-Pacific, however, announced in September it would close the facility by the end of November. Cate was among a group of retired mill executives and workers who immediately formed a Citizens Action Task Force to find a buyer.
Since its construction in 1954, the plant has provided 2,000 direct and indirect jobs, which also account for about a quarter of Taylor County’s economic output.
Environmentalists have longed blamed the mill for decades of pollution in the Fenholloway River, which carries the wastewater produced by dissolving cellulose into the Gulf of Mexico.
The Florida Legislature designated the Fenholloway an “industrial river” in 1954 to allow the discharge of industrial and chemical waste and effluent to entice Procter & Gamble to build the mill in 1954.
The current task force, backed by the Taylor County Economic Development Authority, sent Cate to London to find a buyer for the mill among executives at the symposium, including some Cate had known as a colleague and competitor during his 44-year career.
“I can tell you that there’s already outreach being made to Georgia Pacific,” Cate told the Tallahassee Democrat Monday after briefing task force and the development authority about the eight meetings he held with executives in London over two days.
A Georgia-Pacific spokesman said any discussions about the sale of the mill would be kept confidential for business reasons.
Former executives say Perry mill had been profitable
Cate said he went to London to find people with the money and expertise needed to keep the mill operating and connect them to Georgia-Pacific: “You heard a lot of stuff in the industry press. A lot of myths and rumors. Let’s talk, here are the facts.”
The bottom line in Cate’s sales pitch is that he and a dozen former mill executives believe it was profitable for six of its seven decades. They see no reason why it can’t be a money-maker again.
“Six of them want to continue to move forward and needed more information from the state of Florida,” Cate said.
Laura DiBella, CEO of the Enterprise Florida state agency, which becomes the Department of Commerce after this month, outlined a package that included grants, tax incentives, job training programs, and infrastructure improvements the state could provide to “sweeten the deal,” Cate explained.
An Enterprise Florida representative did not comment directly on any discussions that DiBella participated in but did confirm the economic development agency has had talks with potential buyers who expressed interest.
“A formal incentive package isn’t something that happens until a prospective company starts proposing firm details,” spokesperson Rose Hebert said.
Most workers laid off, ‘transitional support’ offered
Meantime, Georgia-Pacific spokesperson Scott Mixon said the closure is proceeding, with most of the plant’s 525 workers having been laid off.
“We will continue to work with local community and state agencies to provide additional transitional support to employees,” Mixon said.
Georgia-Pacific has said it will leave the plant in “a sellable condition” and talk only to Enterprise Florida about the plant’s future. But that leaves the laid-off workers and much of North Florida out of any negotiations.
“I’m not saying that there isn’t more to be known,” said Taylor Brown, who heads the Taylor County Economic Development Authority. “I’m not on the inside. Georgia-Pacific is a private company, so they don’t have to tell anybody what they’re up to or what can ultimately come.”
James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com and is on X as @CallTallahassee.
Source link
credite