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Canfor\u2019s\u00a0plan to permanently shut down the pulp line at Prince George Pulp and Paper by March and potentially put as many as 300 mill workers out of work is not the only grim reality facing the north central B.C. wood industry.<\/p>\n
The lack of economical fibre in the region and low lumber prices that have forced curtailments and reduced the availability of residual wood chips from sawmills means at least one more pulp mill in the region will likely be targeted for closure, according to forest industry expert Ben\u00a0Parfitt.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think people don\u2019t really appreciate just how significant the reductions ahead are going to be and what that is going to translate into in the Interior,\u201d said\u00a0Parfitt, resource policy analyst for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately there\u2019s every reason to believe that we\u2019re going to see further mill closures and I wouldn\u2019t be at all surprised to see another pulp mill in the Interior of the province go down, nor would I be surprised to see a number of other sawmills close as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The most likely pulp candidates for closure are\u00a0Canfor\u2019s\u00a0Taylor mill, which was shut down in November and won\u2019t be restarted until spring, as well as one of West Fraser\u2019s two mills in\u00a0Quesnel,\u00a0Cariboo\u00a0Pulp and Paper or\u00a0Quesnel\u00a0River Pulp.<\/p>\n
In addition to the pending PG Pulp closure,\u00a0Canfor\u00a0has announced it will close its pellet mill and lumber mill in\u00a0Chetwyndand its lumber mill in Houston. That comes after the March 2022 closure of the Pacific Bioenergy Pinnacle pellet mill in Prince George after 22 years of operation.<\/p>\n
Parfitt\u00a0says the lack of fibre stems from the B.C. government encouraging harvesting of beetle-killed pine and spruce forests after infestations began in 2009, which depleted supplies and created an overabundance of mill capacity that has deepened the crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to be thinking very carefully in British Columbia about how we start to diversify the industry and in my view we have made mistakes in the past by putting so many eggs into one basket, in this case into the pellet basket,\u201d said\u00a0Parfitt.<\/p>\n
The pellet wood industry that took root in\u00a0Quesnel\u00a0and Williams Lake around 2008 as an efficient home heating source has expanded to 13 pellet plants in B.C. and that\u2019s created a new sector that is competing with mills for pulp logs and increasing pressure on the forest industry.<\/p>\n
Parfitt\u00a0said the province would have been better off to give secondary value-added forest companies access to timber supplies the pellet industry is now using. Most of the pellets made in B.C. are shipped overseas by\u00a0Drax\u00a0Group, a British-based energy company that sells pellets in Europe and Asia for generating electricity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose pellet plants are consuming an immense amount of wood, about five million cubic metres equivalent per year, which in my view has effectively taken wood away from companies that could have added more value and produced more jobs with that wood,\u201d said\u00a0Parfitt.<\/p>\n
\u201cPellets, in my view, are an extremely poor choice because huge amounts of wood are needed to sustain jobs in the pellet industry, while producing very few jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said increased competition for wood from the pellet industry resulted in pulp mills having to turn whole pulp logs into chips, which has driven up production costs dramatically.<\/p>\n
Last week, B.C. Forest Minister Bruce\u00a0Ralston\u00a0announced a new $25 million Forest Landscape Planning program to better protect old-growth forests and encourage innovation in the industry. The province will expand old-growth deferrals to 2.1 million hectares, up from 1.7 million ha last spring. The new funding will create eight regional forest landscape planning tables that will include 50 B.C. First Nations which will shape decisions on where harvesting and road building will occur.<\/p>\n
The government is shaping forestry legislation to include more Indigenous engagement in resource management in line with the principles outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples passed in 2019.<\/p>\n
The NDP is also doubling its BC Manufacturing Jobs Fund to $180 million to support the value-added forestry sector and create products such as mass timber structural lumber using smaller-dimension trees.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the provincial government is serious about moving up\u00a0 the value chain in the forest industry it\u2019s got an awful lot of work to do,\u201d said\u00a0Parfitt. \u201cEven with the recent announcement to increase the value-added fund to $180 million is really not sufficient given the kinds of investments that would be required to reposition the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
As an example of the\u00a0unsustainability\u00a0of current harvesting practices,\u00a0Parfitt\u00a0says some logging trucks are being loaded in the far reaches of the\u00a0Nass\u00a0timber supply area north of Terrace, driven 500 kilometres to be off-loaded at Houston, where another truck drives the same load another 300 km to Prince George.<\/p>\n
When the lumber market reached historic highs in 2021, companies like\u00a0Canfor\u00a0could afford to go further in search of wood and recorded record profits despite lower logging rates. But now with prices below the break-even point of $500 US per thousand board feet and available fibre supplies expected to continue to decline than that\u2019s prompted the latest round of mill closures.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are running out of forest,\u201d\u00a0Parfitt\u00a0said. \u201cToo much has been cut too quickly and we\u2019re facing that inevitable day of reckoning and if we want to start to move away from the crisis we\u2019re in it\u2019s by getting the industry to start to do very different things from what it is currently doing, and that will take time and investment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parfitt\u00a0lives in Victoria and be a virtual guest speaker at the Future of Forestry forum next Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at\u00a0UNBC\u2019s\u00a0Canfor\u00a0Theatre.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Canfor\u2019s\u00a0plan to permanently shut down the pulp line at Prince George Pulp and Paper by March and potentially put as many as 300 mill workers out of work is not the only grim reality facing the north central B.C. wood … Continue reading