City bracing for summer closures at pulp mills

Businesses across Prince George are bracing for spillover effects from the temporary closure of two key employers as the woes of B.C.’s forestry sector deepen.

A weeks’ worth of production cuts at Canfor’s sawmills in the region, due to shrinking timber supplies and poor markets, have robbed the pulp facilities of the residual wood chips that are their raw material.

So Canfor Corp. last week announced the temporarily suspension of operations at its Northwood and Intercontinental pulp mills, two of three pulp-and-paper facilities it operates here, in phases that will cost some 760 employees three weeks’ to a month’s work over the summer.

“Whether or not it’s a month, eight weeks, or whatever it might be, those are lost wages for those folks,” said Mayor Lyn Hall, “and that will impact them and their families.”

And the impact will be felt across swaths of the city’s business sector from suppliers to the big mills to shopping malls that cater to workers and their families, said city economic development manager Melissa Barcellos.

Canfor spokeswoman Michelle Ward said the curtailment will begin next Friday with the suspension of operations at its Intercontinental mill, which will remain closed until Aug. 12, and affect some 241 workers.

Its bigger Northwood mill, with 518 workers, will shut down Aug. 15 and remain closed for three weeks until Sept. 9. In total, the closures will reduce Canfor’s output of pulp for paper production by 75,000 tonnes out of its 1.1-million-tonne-per-year capacity.

“The company intends to resume full production at Intercontinental and Northwood in September,” said Ward, Canfor’s director of corporate communications.

Ward said employees have the option to use banked time off during the curtailment or be laid off to seek employment insurance claims.

Ward had no additional news about further curtailments but Hall said the community, where forestry is still a significant presence, is trying to look farther into the future.

“The piece for us is what’s next,” said Hall. “We know the curtailments are short-term, but what’s next after the short term?”

The 760 workers affected by the summer mill closures represent a noticeable chunk of the estimated 9,000 direct and indirect jobs in Prince George’s workforce of some 53,200 — about 18 per cent of overall employment.

Forestry consulting firm Wood Markets Group, in a report released in May, estimated that up to 12 Interior B.C. sawmills will have to close over the next decade due to the reduction of timber in provincial forests owing to the decade-long mountain pine beetle infestation and successive years of damage because of wildfires.

Since then, Tolko Industries announced the closure of a sawmill in Quesnel, with the loss of 150 jobs, and elimination of a shift at its Kelowna mill at the cost of another 90 jobs.