“Foreign corporations such as Botnia may not automatically bear the principal responsibility over what went wrong here. Nevertheless, the company was surely aware of how dirty the pulp industry intrinsically is. Several decades ago in the state of Maine, the pulp industry was progressively shuddered in the 1960s onward because of its massive environmental threat to the state’s ecology, a graphic portrayal of what could occur in Uruguay. One could also raise the question how watchful and responsible were Uruguayan authorities, as well as the international agencies. These groups were coming up with much of the funds needed to construct a project whose very nature should have initially flashed a red light to all concerned and allowed for thoughtful decisions to be framed before a heavy commitment had been made.”

“Finland’s Botnia has announced that weakening market conditions and growing pulp inventories have led it to reduce production at its mills, include its newly launched Uruguay pulp plant. In Uruguay, Botnia’s Fray Bentos mill will take 14 days downtime in November in order to cut the production by approximately 40,000 tons during the last quarter of 2008, the company said in a statement.”

“Uruguay’s economy grew by 13.1 percent in the first half of the year from the same period a year ago as a controversial foreign-owned paper pulp mill came on line, the central bank said on Friday.”