Unions are shaping up for a fight over the axing of Australia's last white paper manufacturing plant.
Opal Australian Paper has confirmed it will officially stop manufacturing white pulp and paper at its Maryvale mill in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, having produced its last ream on January 21.
The move means up to 200 job losses for the region and comes after the end of a Victorian government guarantee to pay stood-down production workers.
Opal plans to take the bad news back to its team for further consultation, having already talked through the potential closure with workers and unions.
"Following that consultation, the process will then move through redeployment considerations and into a redundancy process in accordance with Opal's legal obligations," it said in a statement on Wednesday.
The company has proposed redundancies for 32 of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union's maintenance workers, Gippsland organiser Steve Dodd said.
But the AMWU is pushing for that figure to be closer to 12.
"We've asked for a whole range of information. They just come back bulls***ing to us," Mr Dodd told AAP.
The AMWU and the Electrical Trades Union could take Opal to the Fair Work Commission to contest redundancy numbers following consultation.
"Unions and the Victorian state government have been trying to work with Opal for some time to find short and long-term solutions and today's exit is a kick in the face," a spokesman for the electrical union's Victorian branch said.
"We remind Opal that they have responsibilities under the enterprise agreement, and the union reserves all rights."
The Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union lambasted the early end of white paper production in Australia as "disastrous" and blamed a lack of appropriate action by Opal and the Victorian government.
Opal pointed to its inability to source wood from state-owned supplier VicForests as the reason behind its decision to call time on white paper manufacturing.
White paper production at the mill was impacted late last year after VicForests was ordered to scale back harvesting after the Victorian Supreme Court found it failed to adequately survey logging coupes for two protected possum species.
It is appealing the decision.
The Victorian government said it was working with the company to minimise redundancies and offer support services to affected workers.
