BANGOR (AP) – A former vice president of Polaroid Corp. says he wants to buy the bankrupt Eastern Pulp and Paper Corp. and introduce a product line of papers used in digital imaging equipment.

“Our interest in this mill is to really make it a success with new products,” said Satish Agrawal of Concord, Mass., whose professional career has been focused on imaging processes and products.

Agrawal characterized the negotiations as delicate and would not say how much he is offering for the shuttered mills in Brewer and Lincoln.

Agrawal already has an affiliation with Eastern Pulp.

He said his name is on two patent-pending digital paper processes that were being developed by the company before its shutdown last month.

Efforts to sell the mills accelerated on Thursday, one day after U.S. Bankruptcy Chief Judge James B. Haines postponed until Monday a court hearing on whether the mills should be abandoned.

That essentially gave any interested buyer more time to solidify a satisfactory offer, known in bankruptcy court as a “stalking horse bid.”

“The good news is it’s still alive,” said Agrawal, about efforts to sell the mills. “The bad news is (the sale’s) not closed yet.”

Agrawal said his partner, Robb Osinski of Salisbury, Mass., is handling the negotiations.

Osinski, an avid golfer, helped develop a color-changing technology that turns the white casing around golf balls into a battleship gray color when they become waterlogged.

A source close to the negotiations told the Bangor Daily News that Agrawal and Osinski plan to restart the Lincoln mill as soon as a sale is closed. Some of Brewer’s operations may be consolidated into Lincoln while the owners, along with a team of sales and management professionals, evaluate the future of the Brewer mill, said the source, who asked not to be identified.

Up to 500 of the 750 jobs that were lost when both mills were closed would be preserved.

The mills will remain heated and maintained by a skeleton crew until Monday. If no buyer is announced at the start of Monday’s court hearing, the focus will turn to abandonment and environmental cleanup issues pertaining to both mills if they are permanently closed.

The Department of Environmental Protection opposes abandonment, arguing that hazardous materials at the site could pose an “immediate and imminent threat” to human health and the environment.

The DEP says the state has no money to detoxify the facilities, and Eastern Pulp’s court-appointed trustee, Bangor attorney Gary Growe, says he doesn’t either.

The environmental agency has threatened to put liens on the mills to cover the cleanup costs, but creditor Congress Financial Corp. of New York City is fighting DEP’s efforts. Congress Financial was to go to U.S. District Court on Thursday to place a temporary restraining order on the DEP, but the hearing was postponed.

Both the lender and the state agreed that “it was in everybody’s best interest” to try to sell the mills over the next few days, thus eliminating the risk of a possible environmental catastrophe.

AP-ES-02-20-04 0217EST