The Talk of Maine piece on Maine\u27s sixteen paper mills. In the past two decad

The Talk of Maine piece on Maine\u27s sixteen paper mills. In the past two decades, employment in the mills has dropped from 18,000 to 14,000. In the late 1950s there were 6,000 loggers working in the Maine woods to supply the ills; today there are 500, according to forest industry expert Lloyd Irland of Winthrop. Between 1998 and 2000 alone, 4.8 million acres, or 22 percent of the working forest, changed hands, often going to companies called institutional investors with little or no experience in the pulp and paper industry. Within a decade or two, Maine may well see all of its bigger paper mills owned by only three or four multinational companies. Smaller mills will join the 20 Maine mills that have closed since 1900. According to Mark Wilde, an analyst with Deutsche Bank in New York, consolidation within the paper industry is an international trend. More ominously, Wilde and others aren\u27t optimistic about Maine\u27s ability to compete on a global scale. It\u27s no accident that Maine hasn\u27t seen a new paper mill built in 20 years