Gorham Paper mill Hiring

[peakbagger]

The Berlin Daily Sun has an article today (6/7/12) about the Gorham Papermill. The facility is now currently hiring for up to 16 employees. I dont expect many VFTT folks would be interested in papermaking but of more importance is the plant is now actively hiring new employees that didnt work for the facility previously.

For those not familiar with papermaking it can be hard work on rotating shifts. The upsides are that the compensation is good with full benefits. As it is shift work, the workers get several long stretches of time off each month but when working its 12 hour shifts in a hot noisy environment. I expect there will be a lot of folks working seasonal or tourist jobs in the area that will be lined up to apply.

 

[Chip]

That's good news.

I pulled into the Pinetree Power facility in Bethlehem the other day. Big pile of chips there waiting. Not much employee activity, but that process may be mostly automated.

There's some news there also on the Jericho wind farm; http://www.berlindailysun.com/index...-wind-project&catid=103:local-news&Itemid=442

Article mentions the old turbines were vandalized and shut down. Hope that's not an issue going forward.

 

[peakbagger]

The original Jericho wind farm was a local joke, the owner bought "junk" turbines from somewhere else and installed them himself. There wasnt any engineering involved and PSNH had no interest in him hooking them up to the grid unless the connection was signed off by a PE. My former coworkers at Northern Power (a wind turbine manufacturer) were somewhat interested as they had never seen one of this type of turbine actually running as the two blade design used was infamous in the industry for very high vibration levels which led to early failures. The towers were lattice instead of monopole which tend to be bad for wildlife as raptors love to hang out on lattice poles. The proposed 2 MW turbines in theory would be considerably taller with monopole towers and more visible from the surrounding area.

It will be interesting if the new project goes anywhere as the grid in the area is potentially out of capacity and requires a 250 million dollar upgrade. There is an even larger windfarm (190 MW?)than the new Millsfield farm that is on hold north of Dixville notch due to lack of capacity on the local lines. The firm will need to get in the "ISO queue" and get in line to have a study done to determine the inpact of the additional generation and that study may take a couple of years.

 

[peakbagger]

Here is a link to an article about the Gorham Papermill expansion from Boston .com

http://articles.boston.com/2012-06-14/news/32238245_1_paper-mill-paper-towels-production-jobs