RUMFORD — Nearly four dozen local people will be out of work as NewPage paper company prepares to lay off 5 percent of its workforce nationwide.

Several workers on Tuesday said they were told the layoffs would begin at the end of the month.

NewPage announced in December that it had completed financial restructuring and emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Officials at the local mill announced Tuesday that about 45 workers would be laid off. The layoffs will continue through April, a spokesman said.

Rumford Town Manager Carlo Puiia said he heard about the layoffs from a colleague who works at the mill. By Tuesday night, Puiia said, town officials were assessing the preliminary information and waiting to see what would come next.

“We’ll wait and see what further announcements they come out with,” Puiia said. “We’re always concerned when any jobs get lost. It touches everybody in a town like this.”

Puiia said the layoffs might have an impact on the town budget, but it was too soon to say what that impact would entail.

By the end of 2012, the Rumford mill employed about 700 workers. In November, the Sun Journal chronicled struggles at the mill and in Rumford as a whole.

The local layoffs are part of broader cutbacks. NewPage announced it will lay off 300 people in central Wisconsin. It is one of that state’s biggest employers.


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