Bell Expresses Confidence in Saw Mill Rebuilds
Monday, May 7, 2012 @ 10:44 AM
Prince George, BC.- Minster of Jobs Tourism and Innovation, Pat Bell says he feels “pretty confident” that both the Lakeland and Babine Forest Products sawmills will be rebuilt and will reopen.
Both mills were destroyed by explosion and fire, which claimed two lives at each site, and injured dozens more.
“Certainly I feel more confident about Lakeland , but I feel confident about Babe as well. I’ve spent a lot of time working with Steve Zika who is the CEO for Hampton( Hampton Affiliates owns the Babine mill) a lot of time with Albert Gerow, the representative Chief of the six Bands in the area, Luke Strimbold, the Mayor. I think everyone’s on the same page so I’m felling pretty good about Burns Lake and Lakeland. So I think we will break the trend of mills that have suffered fires not being rebuilt by seeing both of these rebuilt.”
Speaking on the Meisner program on CFISFM this morning, Bell says the price of lumber is the key component in how the mills in the Province are going to operate. “We have for a long time inventoried our wood based on projected values. In other words, if you can only pay $50 a meter or $60 dollars a cubic meter for logs l delivered into your mill operation then that limits the distance you can go for the wood or the adversity of the grade that you’re harvesting in. But as lumber prices come up that all changes and lumber prices are changing rapidly. Last week, Random Lengths reached $329 dollars a thousand board feet on the composite index and that’s as high as its been for two, maybe three years.”
Bell says that under Ootsa Lake, there is about 6 million cubic meters under water there, “It’s not economical right now, unless you can get $100 bucks a cubic meter for the wood, but as lumber prices come up, that wood will be competitive and you will see people going in there to start to log that.”
Comments
People have been taking trees out of Ootsa Lake as far back as th 1970’s. Bond Bros of Vanderhoof used to log underwater on a regular basis.
Seems to me they quit because is was not economical. Dont see why it would be to-day.
Time will tell whether or not these mills re open, and certainly fibre supply will be the big issue. The fact that the Burns Lake and Cariboo areas will have a huge loss in available timber in the next 5/10 years will be a factor.
Seems to me that there will be a loss of approx 9000 jobs in the forest industry in the next 10 years, (Government report) so either way, we are in a downturn insofar as the forest industry goes.
Canfor tried Ootsa Lake wood a few years ago, both from the shallow and deep parts of the lake, neither of which panned out.
The shallow stuff was exposed to air at times and as a result was not fit to mill for lumber. Deeper stuff was waterlogged and extremely heavy, costly to haul and hard on the mill. Because of the water content it had to air dry for quite a while before hitting the kiln.
After planing it still had an unpleasant odour. Some of the finished product was sent to UBC for testing and I believe it did not have the strength of traditional dimension lumber.
Maybe there is more fibre on the moon?
We vastly incresed the allowable cut to allow for almost unlimited salvage. And gave awaya the logs at 25 cents. If not for salvage woood, several mills would already be history.
No matter how much you play with the numbers there is not enough green wood to go around.
The forest industry has been bracing for a log shortage for several years. There was and still is constant debate over how many and which mills will close.
Frank
“he does love to be in the press don’t he?”
I think it’s more of a case of the press loves him. If he wasn’t in the news, people would no doubt be complaining that you never hear from him.
I think Pat may be wrong on this one! The mills should stay down and the employees retrained.Short term pain for long term gain!
I think Pat has watched one too many episodes of AX men …. specifically where the guy in the south USA recovers lumber from the swamp
Pat is very good at playing both sides of the fence … just to find which side is greener….
When our wood runs out we could buy back all those raw logs they are shipping out now? What didn’t someone say those raw log milling jobs are only using excess wood? That is like spending all your excess money this week so you can be broke next week……something is wrong with this mindset!
Sawmills face soaring insurance rates after fatal blasts
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120504/bc_sawmill_insurance_rates_120504/20120504/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome
Well as Mr. Bell has stuck his neck out in not quite assuring everyone of two mill re-builds, I sincerely hope his “confidence” is based on factual knowledge because as he knows, all the workers cling to his every word and no one will forget what he predicted, oops, I mean what he felt confident about.
Politicians, unable to remain speechless.
metalman.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Pat Bell may well think he, Steve Zika, Albert Gerow and Luke Strimbold are on the same page but all four of them need to be reminded that the forests are publicly owned and what really matters is whether they are on the same page with the larger community of Burns Lake and with the people of British Columbia.
. . . . And the people of British Columbia do not want forest reserves to be logged and nor do they want to log the mid-term timber supply belonging to the next generation.
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