The state of Maine is about 89 p.c forest and has an $8.3 billion forestry business. Apart from logging, papermaking has all the time been a big a part of that. On the business’s peak, there have been 35 paper mills within the state. As we speak, there are six.
The paper mill in Madison, a rugged city of about 4,700 residents the place it’s not unusual to see vans stacked with logs coming and going, shut down in 2016. For over a century, the mill, dwelling to Madison Paper Industries, had been answerable for a majority of the city’s good-paying jobs with advantages. Whilst the corporate was being revalued in 2013, partly due to the decline in paper gross sales, the mill made up 46 p.c of the city’s tax base.
When it closed, nobody was shocked. The newspaper business had been declining for years, and Madison Paper Industries, maker of the shiny paper utilized by The New York Instances for inserts, struggled, too.
“The handwriting was on the wall, so it wasn’t a shock,” mentioned Rick Veinotte, who had labored for 25 years at Madison Paper, which was owned by a three way partnership of UPM-Kymmene and Northern SC Paper, a subsidiary of The Instances.
“But it surely was unhappy for the greater than 200 staff who could be out of labor,” Mr. Veinotte added. “And it was devastating to the city.”
A decade later, Madison remains to be attempting to determine what it’s with out the paper mill, one other instance of a small city depending on a shrinking business that’s had a tough go of transferring on. And the mill’s new proprietor has struggled to revive manufacturing within the city, an indication of simply how onerous it’s to make issues on a big scale in America when manufacturing jobs throughout all industries have been scarce.
TimberHP acquired the defunct paper mill in 2019. Matt O’Malia, an architect, and Joshua Henry, a chemist, paid $2.3 million to purchase the 600,000-square-foot plant and refurbish it into one making wooden fiber insulation panels from wooden chips and different wooden waste.
The transfer appeared like a win for each the group, which acquired a brand new employer and massive taxpayer, and TimberHP, which acquired the wooden from Maine’s forestry business and had entry to seasoned manufacturing employees.
Wooden fiber insulation, a product that’s made in Europe however had not been produced in america till TimberHP got here alongside, might additionally tackle America’s much-needed housing building and sustainable constructing efforts, the corporate mentioned.
The founders mentioned they wished to assist revitalize Madison. Each grew up in working-class cities — Mr. O’Malia in Belfast, Maine, and Mr. Henry in Pittsburgh — they usually wished to interchange most, if not all, of the misplaced paper mill jobs.
However seven years later, conserving the doorways open at TimberHP hasn’t been straightforward. The Covid-19 pandemic snarled provide chains, delaying deliveries on issues the corporate wanted to refurbish the mill, akin to copper and transformers. Just a few years later, hovering inflation and building delays stemming from these disruptions slowed the event of TimberHP’s manufacturing traces — enabling the corporate to make solely two merchandise as an alternative of the three initially deliberate.
And, broadly, the problem conserving the plant alive and saving even a fraction of the roles it as soon as supported highlights the hurdles to a producing revival that policymakers from the native stage to the White Home say they wish to encourage.
The founders tried to promote TimberHP with out success. Burdened by debt and operating out of money, the corporate filed for Chapter 11 chapter safety in 2025. Its chief government, Mr. Henry, left abruptly final fall. He instructed The Instances that he was legally “actually not allowed to speak about why I left.”
TimberHP’s challenges have been largely associated to cash. Regardless of elevating $122 million in two fund-raising rounds and receiving $3 million in grants from the state, the corporate didn’t have sufficient to climate the storms the pandemic had set off.
Enterprise capital funding wasn’t an choice as a result of these buyers have been used to creating returns that have been orders of magnitude greater than their investments in know-how firms and different fast-growing companies. Manufacturing wasn’t that.
“Enterprise needs these actually outsized returns,” Mr. O’Malia, now the corporate’s chief government, mentioned.
The corporate was operating out of money, Mr. O’Malia mentioned. It took over a yr to get out of Chapter 11 chapter safety, pay again buyers and begin producing the wooden fiber boards.
“Chapter 11’s not low-cost,” Mr. O’Malia mentioned, referring to authorized charges and exit financing whereas nonetheless having to stay operational.
Sam Hight, an early investor in TimberHP whose prolonged household companies embrace three actual property growth companies, jokes that his funding “become a donation.”
Nonetheless, he mentioned he believed in what the corporate was attempting to do. Mr. Hight’s building firm is utilizing TimberHP merchandise for a big reasonably priced housing undertaking.
In 2025, TimberHP paid about $196,895 in taxes to the City of Madison. It was one thing, however it was nonetheless “a far cry from the $3.7 million Madison Paper Industries paid in 2013,” mentioned Tim Curtis, Madison’s former city supervisor.
In November, TimberHP introduced it was out of chapter. Since then, the corporate and the city have began to search out their footing. The corporate has about 80 staff, about half of its unique aim.
TimberHP can be discovering some success. Its merchandise are getting used on a multifamily undertaking by Avesta Housing, a Maine-based reasonably priced housing supplier; Amazon is utilizing its merchandise in an Elkhart, Ind., supply station, as is Meta for its Richland Parish Knowledge Heart in Louisiana; and D.R. Horton, the nation’s largest dwelling builder, is utilizing TimberHP’s insulation on townhouses within the Mid-Atlantic.
The corporate is also being supported by investments from FTAI Infrastructure, a clear power investor, and different buyers and finance companions together with BlackRock and the Finance Authority of Maine.
Even because the city’s manufacturing future appears looking forward to now, Madison is dealing with shedding an business that had been the lifeblood of the city. Individuals nonetheless communicate of the mill’s loss as if it had been the passing of a residing being.
“I’m not an actual emotional particular person, however I might have simply stood there and cried,” Mr. Veinotte mentioned about its closing.
Denise Ducharme, the city’s supervisor, who has lived in Madison since 1983, calls it “the type of group the place you’ll be able to’t sneeze and not using a neighbor figuring out.”
“For thus lengthy, our group’s id was tied to being a paper mill city,” she mentioned. “We had to determine who we have been and not using a paper mill — who we wished to be — type of an id disaster.”