Cascades, a leader in the recovery and manufacturing of green packaging and tissue paper products, recently announced its unaudited financial results for the three-month period ended September 30, 2014.
Q3 2014 Strategic Highlights include:
- Initiated installation of a new tissue converting facility in Wagram, North Carolina
- Permanent closure of the kraft paper mill in East Angus, Québec
- Machine rebuild at the Reno De Medici's Santa Giustina mill
- Q2 2014 refinancing resulting in interest savings and extension of maturities
- Start-up of the new tissue paper machine in Oregon on October 25
Mr. Mario Plourde, President and Chief Executive Officer, had the following comments on the third quarter results: "We are encouraged by the fact that our results continued to show improvement nothwithstanding lost time and damages resulting from a major fire which occurred in the raw material stock piles at our Niagara Falls operations during the quarter. Despite this unfortunate event, EBITDA excluding specific items increased on a sequential and year-over-year basis. All our groups in North America showed improved results compared to the previous quarter, helped by better productivity, favourable exchange rates, higher tissue volume and lower landed cost for brown recycled papers. In Europe, our boxboard operations were impacted by the seasonal production slowdown which was amplified this year by dowtime for the machine rebuild at Reno De Medici's Santa Giustina mill.
As for our Greenpac mill, the fire in Niagara Falls also prevented the mill from contributing positively to earnings per share during the quarter, as anticipated. The mill rapidly resumed production following the fire and continues to generate improved cash flows. On the sales and production front, the Greenpac mill is performing as expected and the team is now focusing on the development and roll-out of its value-added lightweight grades. "
