Plateau Mill Trims A Shift

Thursday, December 27, 2007 04:50 AM

Prince George, B.C. - Inside sources say that the elimination of a third shift at Canfor’s Plateau Mill west of Vanderhoof will be for an indefinite period of time.

The mill cut the third shift about 2 months ago will little fanfare , but recently workers have been told that the third shift will not reappear, in spite of the fact that the mill has been averaging about 2 million board feet a day production with a staff of about 300 people.

The Plateau Mill is considered a flag ship in the industry and is reported to be operating very close to the break even mark in spite of loans and support of the executive offices.

The elimination of the third shift has meant that 50 or 60 people are out of work.

Two things are expected to take place in the New Year, pulp logs will begin to be trucked from the area west of Vanderhoof direct to PG, and insiders say that another look will be taken at the Canfor operations in Mackenzie.

They say that the mill cannot continue to survive given that the market in the US has been cut by about 50% and is expected to stay that way until mid 2009, and the mills in Canada have still not trimmed their operations to meet those cuts. "We need to take 40 to 50% out of production and we haven’t " says one operator.

"The Americans are watching us very closely" said another operator "They heard Hydro subsidies were being offered to keep mills afloat and the US Coalition was all over that. They are hurting bad as well and they are not about to let Canadian operators gain any ground on them."

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Posted on Thursday, December 27, 2007 04:50 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: DPJ on December 27 2007 10:53 AM

Typical americans. Thinking of themselves and not abiding to free trade unless its positive to themselves

Posted by: Parrothead on December 27 2007 5:49 PM

While you're right DPJ, that doesn't change the fact that production in the market is TOO HIGH. It's not sustainable. AT least so long as we maintain the single-market attitude. Time to focus on India. Screw China.

Posted by: vulcan on December 28 2007 9:58 AM

It is time that are gutless, Canadian government stand up to the U.S. and quit bowing to them like they are royalty. As for logs being hauled from one community to another to be processed is crap. The logs should stay in the closest community to be processed. If the small communities in the north sit back and lets this happen, the next thing that will happen is that our logs, will be hauled south of the boarder to keep the U.S. mills running and ours will be shut down. We in the north have got to make our voices heard.