May 29, 2024 (press release) –
Pulp & Tissue President Richard Tremblay is an experienced executive with more than 35 years in the pulp and paper industry. He was born in La Tuque (Quebec) and graduated from the University of Sherbrooke. Prior to joining Resolute in 2011, he served as general manager of several mills at Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation. He was named to his current role in February 2024, after serving in roles of increasing responsibility leading Resolute’s pulp, paper and tissue manufacturing operations for more than 13 years. He recently shared his thoughts about the Pulp & Tissue business unit’s 2023 performance and 2024 outlook.
How would you summarize 2023?
Our pulp business faced several challenges last year. Both pricing and sales volumes didn’t meet our expectations until the market started to turn favorable at the end of the year. When combined with this encouraging trend, the integration of the Howe Sound (British Columbia), Meadow Lake (Saskatchewan) and Skookumchuck (British Columbia) pulp mills into the legacy Resolute operating portfolio positioned us very well for 2024.
After contending with demand decline and sacrificing operating time to balance order reductions in 2023, our paper mills will continue to face strong market headwinds in 2024. We’re used to that! We’ve grown accustomed to thinking outside the box to meet these challenges.
The tissue business achieved some recovery and stability in 2023. We put in place a formal sales and operational planning process that has yielded significant improvements in shipping consistency and reliability. We also saw productivity improvements at each of our sites driven by improved operational practices and stable pulp supply.
What are the business unit’s 2024 objectives?
In pulp, we want to be the essential supplier to our target customers. We can achieve that by continuously improving our cost position. In 2024 we’ll be using our continuous improvement and Lean Six Sigma® tools to evaluate how we can improve productivity, efficiency and cost position across our portfolio. We should also get a little help from markets, as some unplanned downtime and logistics hiccups globally have tightened supply, giving us more traction to not only sell everything we make, but get better prices for our products as well. Our deepening integration will also allow us to leverage our wider pool of expertise and resources to give our mills all the tools they need to maximize their potential.
Although we will inevitably take some market downtime at our paper mills this year, we will continue to look for transition options toward other products and execute strong cost management plans across the portfolio that include synergies from our integration. Our paper assets are among the most competitive in the world, and we believe there is value in owning and operating them for years to come.
In tissue, we are focused on improving the profitability of the business. That means defining a path forward for each site through synergies and collaboration to ensure we produce the right product at the right time and at the right cost safely.
- The right products to meet our customers’ needs and their consumers’ preference.
- At the right time to align with volume demand and our customers’ delivery timing.
- At the right cost to enable competitive finished goods pricing, which means positioning our SKU (stock keeping unit) production close enough to deliver on time with competitive distribution costs.
Doing so will also position ourselves to win new business with important long-term strategic customers.
None of this will be possible without our people. We have been challenged with staffing at many of our locations. We are working hard with our Human Resources colleagues to build and retain a highly engaged bench of diverse employees with the right skills and leadership capabilities to help us execute our business strategies. This is a very important objective for me this year. I want all our employees to feel engaged and part of the success of the business.
How can we improve our safety performance?
Too many of our employees are getting hurt too frequently. We need to be better about creating and maintaining a safe workplace and holding everyone accountable for safety. Our goal is zero injuries at every location. This is an area where we will not compromise.
We know it is possible because we have seen it within our own network across several facilities. All our employees are highly engaged and committed to our business’ success, but the Menominee (Michigan) recycled pulp mill stands out as an example to follow. Earlier this year, the site surpassed 2.25 million hours without a single recordable injury. That’s more than 11 years!It goes to show what is possible when everyone is fully engaged in an active and caring environment.
Our employees are empowered to raise any safety-related questions or concerns at any time. If they do not feel they have the right training or tools to perform a job, then they do not start it. We also have the right tools to support everyone in their individual workplace safety assessments. The three pillars of our safety management system – one-on-one safety commitment discussions, hazard recognition and near-miss reporting – are there to guide employees to ensure they go home to their families safe and healthy at the end of every workday.
What are your thoughts on the integration efforts thus far?
I have been in the industry for a few years now and I’ve gone through integration processes a few times. What is particularly challenging in ours is the complexity of putting together not two, but three organizations. Although the legacy companies’ operations and products overlap, key elements such as organizational structure, human resources, accounting policies and information technology infrastructure were very distinct. I think we are doing a good job of bringing these together. In my experience, the key to a successful integration is to keep an open mind from the start and communicate. Overall, I think the more difficult steps are behind us and it’ll get easier going forward.
What kind of results has the integration yielded for the business?
Our commercial and manufacturing operations teams have made significant progress optimizing our mills’ capabilities by transferring production of product grades to better meet customer needs. While there is still work to be done, the teams are focused on putting the right products at the right locations to make the best use of our capabilities and cost structure. It is all made possible by the flexibility within the system created by our combined breadth and scope.
Beyond that, I believe the integration process has made our organization stronger for the future. All three legacy companies held leading positions in certain areas and are now sharing these “best-in-class” elements. In the longer term, I’m convinced this will make the Paper Excellence Group more prosperous and, most importantly, will offer more growth opportunities for our employees.
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