Abitibi Consolidated [ACI] announced today that its mill at Stephenville has been idled as opposed to permanently closed. The CBC story linked above also links to the ACI release, carried by Canada Newswire.
The changed status is a result of an offer from the provincial government that ACI regards as holding the potential to change the financial position of the Stephenville mill.
In substance, though, Stephenville is still closed indefinitely and will only be reopened when and if a successful agreement can be reached.
Workers at the mill are now in limbo, at least until some final decision can be made on government's recent offer.
There was no mention today of the status of the Number Seven machine at Grand Falls which was already scheduled to be phased out.