HALIFAX (From news reports) -- Northern Pulp, the company behind a Nova Scotia mill that shut down four years ago amid environmental shortcomings, says it will cost $2.5 billion to build a new, cutting-edge plant on the province's southwest shore.

But the company says the proposed project, which will require private and public funding, does not currently meet its required rate of profitability -- and it wants more time to find financing.

As a result, the insolvent company will be asking a judge in British Columbia to extend its court-ordered protection from creditors during a hearing scheduled for Friday.

On Monday night, the Nova Scotia government said that as a secured creditor, it would agree to a five-week extension to allow the company to continue working on its plans to build a kraft pulp mill and "bioproducts hub" near Liverpool, N.S.

Northern Pulp has been under creditor protection since June 2020 after it closed its kraft pulp mill in Nova Scotia's Pictou County.

The shutdown was ordered after Northern Pulp failed to meet the province's environmental requirements for a new effluent treatment plant.

The company has been working on a feasibility study for a new mill at or near the site of the former Bowater Mersey Paper Company.