RICHMOND, BC – On February 20, 2020, Paper Excellence Canada advised that its IT systems had been affected by malware. The event impacted the Company’s email capabilities and enterprise business systems that drive fulfillment of paper manufacturing at Crofton, Port Alberni and Powell River. Paper operations were curtailed as orders could not be planned and manufactured because of the systems interruption.

Paper Excellence is now in the second week of the IT event and has recovered its email communications and some networks. Reduced paper production continues but some systems are enabled identifying which paper orders are planned for production and those that will be deferred. Crofton paper operations have been running for five days and a paper machine at Port Alberni will start later this week. We hope to restart Port Alberni’s second paper machine early next week based on logistics and internal capacity to manually fulfill paper orders. We currently plan to start a paper machine at Powell River in the coming two weeks based on Crofton and Port Alberni learnings in the coming days. Given the complexity of our business systems, we are unable to predict a timeframe when we will be back to normal paper production. Our pulp manufacturing continues unabated at all locations.

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Paper Excellence, headquartered in British Columbia, is a diversified manufacturer of pulp and specialty, printing and writing, and packaging papers that operates 9 facilities in Canada and France producing over 3.6 million tonnes annually with a workforce of over 3,500 strong. Paper Excellence is poised to continue to grow with its strategy of operational excellence and high-quality, cost-effective products.

Media Contact: Graham Kissack, VP, EHS and Communications| Mobile – (250) 732-7991