ARICHAT - A representative of the business responsible for the highest percentage of Richmond County's commercial tax revenue appeared before the county's recent Committee of the Whole meeting to provide an update on the activities of Port Hawkesbury Paper (PHP).

Allan Eddy, the business development manager for the Point Tupper mill, appeared at the Richmond Municipal Building in Arichat at the invitation of Richmond Warden Amanda Mombourquette, less than a month after the company announced that it plans to expand its product line beyond the paper assets that have been the mill's stock in trade since it first opened in 1962.

Long before he arrived at PHP, Eddy had already witnessed the dramatic series of events that accompanied the mill's transfer of ownership from NewPage Corporation in 2012, a year after the previous owners filed for bankruptcy and put the mill into hot-idle mode.

At the time, Eddy was serving as deputy minister in Nova Scotia's Department of Natural Resources, now known as the Department of Lands and Forestry. From this vantage point, he saw the dramatic series of events that saw the provincial government, Nova Scotia Power Incorporated (NSPI) and PHP's parent company, Stern Partners, come together on a complicated new ownership deal for the mill, less than 24 hours after it appeared that the three sides had lost their last chance to strike a package that would save the facility. 

Today, as the ownership group celebrates its eighth anniversary and looks to such developments as redirecting heat produced in the thermomechanical pulping process and repackaging the potable water used in paper production, Eddy credits the mill's workforce and the cooperation of such stakeholders as Richmond Municipal Council for the ability to keep the operation running smoothly, eight-and-a-half years into the PHP era.