Lakeland Prepares to Restart
Sinclar Group President Greg Stewart looks over the new single line saw mill machinery – photos 250News
Prince George, B.C. – On Monday December 8th, 110 Lakeland Mills workers will be on the site of the new sawmill, ready to learn the new safety procedures for the new equipment.
It has been a long road from the night of April 23rd in 2012 when an explosion and fire at the mill killed two workers, injured 24 others, and destroyed the mill.
It has been about a year and a half since the Sinclar Group started work on the mill. “It’s pretty exciting for us to be on this site, where we’re at today, we’re looking forward to getting this mill started next week” says Sinclar Group President Greg Stewart. “Obviously the circumstances that led to this are not ideal, and they continue to weigh heavily on our minds and it’s with that incident in mind that we put a lot of effort into this and there are a lot of safety features in this mill.”
The Lakeland workers had a say in the design of this new facility, attending meetings to offer their thoughts on how the mill could be made better, and safer.
The safety features include reducing the presence of flat surfaces where dust could accumulate, so, walls are sealed, I Beams will be capped with triangular pieces, there are no window sills, square cross beams have been installed on an angle so dust will slide off. “It has all been designed to keep dust management under control” says Marc Witte, Plant Manager of Lakeland.
There are new dust collection systems that will vacuum dust into new bag houses (show in photo at right) plus the machine and electrical rooms have been isolated from the processing areas, there is a new spark detection and control system, a new sprinkler system and low energy lighting.
Sinclar Group Operations Manager Bruce McLean says there are far more emergency exits built into the design of this mill than there were in the previous set up, and a new fresh air intake system will keep the building in a positive pressure mode. Windows in the mill have been outfitted with a special shutter system so that in the event of a fire, the shutters will automatically close.
Outside, hearing the Lakeland site had originally been built on a landfill, numerous test drill holes were made to check for methane gas before construction would begin on a new sawmill. Sure enough, they discovered methane, and the new facility is now surrounded by methane wells, the concrete slab is over a ground venting system, and the methane is pumped out and allowed to dissipate. Similar wells, pumps and dispersion systems will be added to the planer and kiln areas.
Sinclar Group President Greg Stewart is not disclosing the full cost of the rebuild nor will he say if the project was on budget, choosing to refer to the budget as “dynamic” as the costs of new technology , and new regulations changed plans along the way. Stewart says the fact the project is about three months behind the original schedule can be blamed entirely on a shortage of skilled labour to complete the construction.
Even as members of the media were being offered a tour of the facility, construction continued with some grinding being done ( photo at right) , over head doors yet to be installed, and interior walls to be completed.
The mill is expected to be a more efficient operation “When we shut down we were producing about 225 million board feet a year on three shifts” says Greg Stewart “It was a two line mill at the time. When we start back up, it will be a one line mill running on two shifts and producing about 200 million board feet . So while it is going to be more efficient, we’re also only going to be operating two shifts.”
The two shifts will be reporting to work for 7 a.m. on Monday December 8th to undergo training on the new system to ensure everyone is given the same training, the same safety message
Lakeland had 160 employees back in April of 2012. The new operation will require 110. Of that number, it’s estimated about 95% are former Lakeland workers who will be returning. “When we shut down, we made sure we reached out to all the other local mills in the area and tried to see if they had any availability to make sure our people were working” says Stewart “We’re just glad to be restarting and getting our people back to work.”
Below the new single line sawmill machinery, silver coloured pipes are part of the new dust collection system:
Comments
This is truly a good news story for Price George; 110 direct good paying jobs, jobs in forestry and trucking, and benefits to local vendors for goods and services.
metalman.
So is the methane being used as an energy source for the mill or is it just been released into the atmosphere.?
Editor’s note:
It is just being released into the atmosphere as there isn’t enough to flare off, or redirect for energy use elsewhere.
Elaine Macdonald
It’s being released to the Politicians
I just love seeing the overhead cranes. You can’t imagine at how incredibly happy overhead cranes make me :)
Think I’m weird? Just try working in a mill where they don’t really have any overhead cranes…..those things are the bees knees!!!
Great looking plant. Agree with Mercenary about the overhead cranes, they’re a great advantage in any mill.
Less workers but a bloated management.
Posted on Wednesday, December 3, 2014 @ 6:53 PM by seamut
Less workers but a bloated management.
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If they are top heavy, what concern is it to you? Seriously, if they’re going to survive they have to be competitive; that’s not something that’s usually possible with “bloated management”.
Well you are always complaining about a bloated civil service, well here is a private issue and you just blow it off.
RIP Glenn.
Wish there was justice for you.
Posted on Wednesday, December 3, 2014 @ 11:07 PM by seamut
Well you are always complaining about a bloated civil service, well here is a private issue and you just blow it off.
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Since we’re not paying for it, they’re free to run their company any way they chose. If it really bugs us, we can do something by taking our business elsewhere.
We don’t really have much choice in paying for “a bloated Civil Service”, Seamut. We can elect politicians who promise to cut it, but the end cost to their attempts at doing that don’t seem to have resulted in any real savings to us as taxpayers.
Former Premier Bill Bennett tried to cut it back in the recession of the early 1980’s, and while much of the ‘bloating’ at the bottom was scaled back in terms of the number of people employed, the supposed ‘savings’ were more than eaten up by more ‘bloating’ (of salaries) of those at the top.
In the end we still paid as much or more, and got less for it in terms of services and service levels where any of us actually had to deal with the BC Government’s Agencies, (now called, hilariously, ‘Service’ BC!)
Gordon Campbell’s crowd, being composed of those elements of the old Social Credit party who were never Socreds, but rather dominated by that rump core of the old BC Liberal Party long centered in the Greater Vancouver area who coalesced with the Socreds under Bill Bennett to get rid of Barrett’s disasterous NDP government, (and then went back to their original moniker when they’d used up all the nostalgic market value of the Socred one), didn’t learn anything from the ‘austerity’ experiment Bill Bennett tried so unsuccessfully. And the BC Liberal attempts at reducing the ‘bloating’ quite probably cost us more from their ineptness than it would have had they actually cut in the right places instead of again in the wrong ones.
Spot on mercenary… gotta love those overheads. They will however need to put on a course for the millwrights…you know, what is a grease nipple and why they need attention more than once a year…
We are not paying for it? So a company that is not run efficiently, not necessarily this one, goes under, we don’t pay for it, ya right.
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