NEW YORK (Standard&Poor's) April 20, 2009--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that it affirmed its 'B' corporate credit rating on Appleton Papers Inc. At the same time, we removed all ratings from CreditWatch with negative implications, where they were initially placed on Dec. 5, 2008. The outlook is negative. We lowered the issue-level ratings on Appleton's senior secured bank credit facilities to 'B+' from 'BB-' and revised the recovery ratings to'2' from '1', indicating the expectation for substantial (70%-90%) recovery in the event of a payment default. This action resulted from the decline in enterprise value in our simulated default analysis because EBITDA is lower than previously expected. "The affirmation reflects our expectation that while Appleton will
