Laidlaw Energy Group, Inc. (LLEG) announced Monday that its affiliate, Laidlaw EcoPower, LLC, has acquired the Fraser Paper Mill and will convert the facility into a 50 megawatt biomass-energy power plant.
The acquisition is expected to be completed within the next several months.
The Berlin, N.H. mill, which closed in May 2006, has infrastructure in place that will allow for the production of biomass energy, including a $100-million Babcock & Wilcox boiler that was installed in 1993.
Before the mill closed, it processed about 1 million tons of biomass annually. The newly converted plant will use over 500,000 tons of biomass a year, creating and keeping about 500 jobs for local truckers and forest products workers, and adding 40 jobs at the biomass-energy plant.
LLEG, headquartered in New York, N.Y., and North American Dismantling, Inc., the current owner of the facility, will jointly develop the rest of the 130 acre site for manufacturing, with the possibility of the energy plant supplying electricity to a manufacturer for process heating applications.