A year after the old Pixelle Specialty Solutions mill in Chillicothe went quiet, paper is coming off the machines again. U.S. Paper Mill Company, which bought the facility in October 2025, says it is hiring for production and has assigned a crew to revive Paper Machine 12 — known on the floor as “The Chief.”
The company plans to have The Chief fully operational and manufacturing new paper by December. More than 180 employees currently work on the campus across a mix of sectors, and officials estimate as many as 350 new paper-operations jobs could be added within the next year. The company says it will look first to the roughly 800 workers who lost jobs when the mill closed in August 2025.
“We are incredibly proud to return The Chief to action,” Plant Manager Craig Teeters said. “It has been gratifying to see the joy on our colleagues’ faces, and it will be a pleasure to welcome more workers into the plant as we prepare to resume paper production in Chillicothe.”
Papermaking has defined Chillicothe for more than two centuries, and the closure of the last large mill was called the end of a 215-year run. The restart is the first hard sign that some of that industrial muscle is not gone for good.
The same campus remains the center of a separate fight. Alignment Engine has floated a “data hall” on the property, and City Council is wrestling with whether the city’s development code even allows a data center there, with residents pressing on water and power. For now, paper jobs are coming back — and the server-hall debate is not over.