The Gorham Paper Mill

Client Profile
The Gorham Paper Mill (the “Mill”) was originally built in 1904 as part of Berlin Paper Mills. Over the next century, the Mill went through several ownership changes, with Fraser Paper acquiring the Mill through a bankruptcy sale in May 2002. Today, the Mill is a specialty, low-cost, non-integrated paper mill historically known for its extensive breadth of capability, producing a wide range of uncoated free-sheet grades for printing and specialty applications as well as towel and tissue products. The Mill encompasses a total of approximately 400,000 square feet of manufacturing and warehousing space. The Mill houses three operating printing presses capable of annually producing over 135,000 tons of paper products, with additional machinery capable of producing approximately 200,000 tons of paper products per year at full capacity.
Situation
In December 2010, Counsel RB Capital, LLC acquired the Mill from Fraser Paper via a Canadian bankruptcy sale process. Prior to the sale to Counsel RB, the Mill was “wound down” and sold as an idled asset. As part of the Mill’s sale, Counsel RB had to make commercially reasonable efforts to find a permanent operating partner with the intention of restarting the Mill’s production and restoring a historic paper-making tradition.
Solution
Counsel RB retained SSG as its exclusive investment banker in December 2010 to market the Mill to a permanent operating partner. SSG marketed the Mill to a wide range of strategic and financial parties, ultimately effectuating the sale of the Mill and substantially all of its assets to an affiliate of Patriarch Partners, LLC. The sale of the Mill was facilitated by the flexibility of the union workforce to restructure its contract and through extensive political and financial support from the State of New Hampshire. With the acquisition of the Mill, it is Patriarch’s intention to resume production on a full-scale basis that should result in the rehiring of the Mill’s employee workforce and reinvigorate the towns of Berlin and Gorham, NH.