OLD TOWN (AP) – About 180 former employees of an idle pulp and paper mill in Old Town were told earlier this month that they would soon be going back to work.

But they’re now being told they’re going to be laid off again, at least temporarily, because of poor market conditions.

Dan Bird, human resources manager at the Red Shield Acquisition LLC mill, said he was in the process of rehiring all 180 laid-off workers to return to the mill, which was purchased about a month ago by Patriarch Partners, a New York investment group.

But plans have now changed because the pulp market has crashed, he said.

“Some people will say, ‘You should have predicted this. Why did you bring everybody back?”‘ Bird said. “But we had double-digit percentage decreases (in price) in just a matter of days.”

The decision to again lay off workers is the latest chapter in efforts to get the plant operating since Georgia-Pacific Corp. shut down the mill in 2006, putting 400 employees out of work.

After Georgia-Pacific shuttered the facility, Red Shield acquired the mill and resumed pulp production, but laid off workers and filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June after experiencing sharp increases in the cost of fuel and materials.

Red Shield Acquisition this month began recalling former employees. About 110 people were working at the plant this week to operate the biomass boiler and winterize the mill, but those numbers will soon be going down.

“Next week we will be dropping the number down to about 75 and in the coming weeks itll be closer to 50,” Bird said. “As I was bringing (workers) back, the bottom was falling unpredictably, unexpectedly out from underneath us, to a point where it was not viable to run our pulping operation, which is really our only revenue.”

Lynn Tilton, the founder and CEO of Patriarch Partners, said in a statement she is bullish about the mill’s future.

“Despite the sudden drop in pulp pricing, our enthusiasm for this long-term project has not waned,” Tilton said.

Tilton hopes to diversify the mill so it’s not so reliant on the up-and-down pulp market, Bird said.

“Her vision is to turn the facility around by diversifying it, so we’ll have these other markets and other products, to buffer our overall business,” Bird said.

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