PORT ANGELES — Sixty of Nippon Paper Industries USA’s 159 hourly and salaried workers were furloughed beginning Friday until April 27 while the mill shuts down production for annual maintenance and cleaning, company Human Resources Manager Cathy Price said.

The Ediz Hook paper- and pulp-making plant’s $85 million biomass-burning cogeneration plant will be offline until the weekend of April 18, when it will resume producing electricity for sale, mill Manager Steve Johnson said last week.

The hiatus is for infrastructure work that the cogeneration plant undergoes every six months, Johnson said.

The mill’s breakers, electric lines and water systems also will be worked on.

The mill itself will remain offline until April 27.

All the cogeneration plant’s employees will remain on the job, as will the company’s maintenance staff, Price said.

It is up to temporarily laid-off workers to file for unemployment or cash in their accrued time off.

“We have coordinated unemployment meetings at the mill if that’s the way they want to go,” Price said.

In addition to electricity, the cogeneration plant also produces steam for the paper mill, which manufactures telephone book paper and newsprint for publications including the Peninsula Daily News and two affiliated weeklies, the Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum.

It also provides newsprint for the weekly Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader.

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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.