OLD TOWN — While local millworkers and business owners said everybody is happy a Wisconsin firm plans to buy and reopen the pulp mill, a union official cautioned that several steps still need to be taken before the deal is finalized.

“That is good news, (but) we still have some hurdles that have to be jumped,” Duane Lugdon, United Steelworkers Union international representative for Maine, said Wednesday morning after a closed-door meeting at the United Steelworkers Local 80 union hall on Main Street.

Expera Specialty Solutions announced Tuesday it has entered into an agreement to purchase Old Town Fuel & Fiber, which closed in mid-August, furloughing about 180 millwokers and another 20 in administration.

“I think it’s the best thing that ever happened,” said a 37-year mill employee, who most recently worked at the company’s wastewater treatment plant and asked not to be identified. “I’m going back.”

Expera said in its announcement that it plans to invest significant additional capital and resources into the Old Town mill and to put all the displaced employees back to work, according to company spokeswoman Addie Teeters.

“It needs some serious money right now,” the 37-year millworker from Old Town said. “You’ve got to have money to make money.”

The Wisconsin company owns four mills in Mosinee, De Pere, Rhinelander and Kaukauna that make bags for microwave popcorn, wine labels, candy wrappers and other specialty papers, according to a video about Expera on YouTube.

“They’re short on pulp and have to buy pulp on the open market,” Lugdon said. “Old Town can make pulp. It’s a good fit for Old Town and a good fit for Expera.”

The companies are not strangers and have worked together before, Lugdon said.

“Our history with them is that they are very honorable people,” he said. “We’re all going to be part of the team.”

Expera was formed last year, when KPS Capital Partners purchased Thilmany Papers and Wausau Specialty Paper, according to information on Expera’s website. While details have not been released, rail and truck is how the pulp will probably travel from Old Town to Wisconsin, Lugdon said.

New York-based private equity firm Patriarch Partners, which concentrates on turning around failed manufacturing operations, purchased the former Georgia-Pacific mill for $19 million in a bankruptcy auction in 2008 and reopened it. Lynn Tilton, owner of Patriarch Partners, said Tuesday that “fuel and energy costs required to operate a nonintegrated mill in the Maine climate made this an unsustainable business operation for us.”

When Old Town Fuel & Fiber closed in August, she blamed foreign competition and increasing wood and energy costs for the shutdown.

“We spent considerable time and effort identifying potential buyers with a business model that could sustain the business and are pleased to have entered into an agreement for this pending sale, which we note is subject to certain conditions and potential overbids that the bankruptcy trustee is required to seek,” Tilton said in a press release about the bankruptcy-court supervised sale.

“We feel the crunch when they’re not here,” Andy Lebreton, co-owner of Wisteria Floral & Gifts on Main Street, said Wednesday about the closed mill. “It affects all the people in town because somebody in every family is tied to the mill.”

Lebreton’s wife, Chris, who worked at the Old Town mill for 24 years before taking a job at the Verso Paper mill in Bucksport seven years ago, learned last month that her Bucksport job will end in December, when she and 570 others will be let go.

“She’s got three more weeks,” Lebreton said. “I think she’ll try to come back up here, maybe.”

The short list of items that need to be tackled before the sale is completed is daunting — creditors suing, educating the bankruptcy trustee, changing licenses and dealing with $1.5 million in back taxes. But the first need is to get people in the mill to winterize it, which is already under way, Lugdon said.

“The court process needs to move forward … so the assets do get protected,” he said. “There is an awful lot to do and still talk about.”

Four creditors in October filed paperwork in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Bangor to force the shuttered mill into bankruptcy, claiming they were owed a total of $1 million. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Louis Kornreich will need to approve the proposed sale to Expera.

City Manager Bill Mayo said Wednesday that local mill officials kept city leaders informed about negotiations over the last few months, but the city was not involved in the sale.

“Expera is a very respected company, and it’s a great fit for Old Town and for the mill,” Mayo said.

Plant leaders were looking for buyers of the stand-alone mill capable of making 600 tons of Northern Bleached Hardwood Kraft pulp per day, Mayo said. The pulp can be used for high-quality printing paper, tissue or other paper products. The mill also is capable of making softwood kraft pulp.

With a user in place such as Expera, “they won’t be under the gun to do that,” the city manager said. “We’re very excited about the sale.”

The mill’s past due taxes include $514,640 in real estate and $546,658 in personal property for 2013 and $553,333 in personal property and $511,580 in real estate for 2014, due in installments on Sept. 17, 2014, and March 18, 2015.

No payments have been made, Mayo said.

He said he’s not sure when or who will pay the taxes with the mill’s sale, but he added, “you can’t extinguish a lien through a municipality, so we’ll get paid.”

Sheila Feero, a 25-year millworker who has worked under four or five previous owners and has been laid off three times, said she and her fellow co-workers are ecstatic about the mill reopening.

“We are excited to be going back to work,” she said.

“There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s not a freight train,” Lugdon said.

More than a dozen vehicles were parked at the mill on Wednesday. A few workers were tasked with starting the heating system and closing up the buildings in preparation for the coming colder weather. Others are expected to return in spurts over the next six weeks with everyone back by the end of the year, Lugdon said.

“We believe there is going to be room for everybody who left in August to return,” the union representative said.

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