OLD TOWN (AP) – About 50 Georgia-Pacific Corp. workers will lose their jobs by year’s end at the Old Town mill under a broad restructuring by the Atlanta-based company that aims to save $100 million a year.

The company said it will idle up to four tissue paper machines and about 70 lines that convert a large tissue roll into smaller sizes that consumers can use as it eliminates 850 jobs in North America. Another 250 jobs will be eliminated in Europe.

The Old Town mill has two tissue-converting lines and four napkin lines, all of which are slated to be shut down, officials said.

After those shutdowns, the Old Town mill will employ 400 people who will continue to produce paper pulp and large “parent” rolls that are created in paper and tissue production, company officials said.

The Old Town mill is more expensive to operate than other mills but it remains a “viable asset to Georgia-Pacific,” said spokeswoman Kelli Roy.

“We are still a viable mill and will concentrate our efforts on supplying market pulp and tissue parent rolls to the market,” Roy said.

The Old Town mill was faced with closure in early 2003 but was able to remain open when the state bought GP’s landfill for $26 million and chose Casella Waste Systems Inc. to operate it.

Money from the sale was used to purchase and install a biomass boiler that helped to reduce energy costs at the mill, Roy said. The mill’s No. 1 paper machine was restarted in January largely because of those savings, she said.

Overall, Georgia-Pacific expects the changes to reduce operating costs by $100 million annually during the next two years, with about 75 percent of the savings in North America.

The company said most of the North American job cuts will be at its Green Bay, Wis., mill. Georgia-Pacific plans to move most of the mill’s warehouse operations to a new center in the Green Bay area and close certain operations there. Mills in Muskogee, Okla., and Savannah, Ga., will also be affected, the company said.

The moves are part of a larger reconfiguring that Georgia-Pacific is undertaking in an attempt to attain a yearly operating profit of $1.2 billion in North America.

The company has already reduced its work force at tissue plants in Plattsburgh, N.Y., Camas, Wash., and Wauna and Halsey, Ore., along with its Dixie factory in Parchment, Mich., where the popular paper-cup brand is manufactured.

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Information from: Bangor Daily News, http://www.bangornews.com

AP-ES-10-05-05 1325EDT