Bulkley Valley residents were reeling last Thursday after West Fraser unexpectedly announced the closure of their Houston Forest Products mill, resulting in the loss of 225 direct jobs.
Houston Mayor Bill Holmberg was not alone in saying he did not see the shutdown coming.
“It was total disappointment, total shock,” Holmberg said. “It was something in the background that we knew sooner or later might happen, but we certainly didn’t get much advance warning.”
The closure is part of West Fraser’s Mountain Pine Beetle Plan, which aims to address the effects of the epidemic that has devastated interior pine forests, leading to a significant loss of merchantable timber.
The mill is expected to close in the second quarter of 2014. West Fraser said they will assist the workers in finding employment at their other operations, in B.C. and Alberta.
“The shutdown of our Houston mill has been a difficult decision and we will work closely with the affected employees to support them through the process,” said West Fraser president and CEO Ted Seraphim. “Our first priority is to explore opportunities to transition Houston employees to one of our other operations and we will provide assistance in finding new employment.”
Part of the announcement was a major mill upgrade to West Fraser’s Pacific Inland Resources’ operation in Smithers.
“We’ll be spending some capital modernizing the mill, doing a rebuild,” said Dave Lehane, West Fraser vice president of woodlands. “We’re currently in the process of doing detailed engineering and putting a project plan together. We expect we will be ordering equipment and under construction in 2014.”
Lehane said it’s too soon to tell if the modernization of the mill will lead to more jobs at the Smithers location.
Part of the mountain pine beetle plan was an exchange of timber harvesting rights with Canfor in the Morice Timber Supply Area, which West Fraser said will provide additional fibre security for the Smithers mill.
“The competitiveness of our operation in B.C. will be significantly improved with the completion of the projects announced today, which are part of a $350-million B.C. capital investment program,” Seraphim said.
Nechako Lakes MLA John Rustad said the announcement of the Houston closure caught him completely off guard.
Rustad chaired a review of Interior timber supplies in the wake of last year’s explosion and fire at Babine Forest Products in Burns Lake, and said he expected the decision to reduce mill capacity in the Quesnel region.
“The surprise is the closure of the Houston mill, from my perspective,” Rustad said. “I think West Fraser has always been looking at how they want to move the wood between the three mills, but when we looked at the opportunities in the Houston area on the timber supply component, there was a significant amount of wood in that area, and our hope was it would continue to support two mills.”
Rustad said the decision last December to provide timber for Oregon-based Hampton Affiliates to rebuild its Burns Lake sawmill “had only very minimal impact” on supply for the other mills in the region.
Stikine MLA Doug Donaldson said he believes the Liberals have been spending too much time exploring LNG developments and lost track of what was going on in the forest industry.
“It’s not just MLA Rustad who sounds like he was caught off guard by the announcement but the whole BC Liberal government,” Donaldson said. “When [the government] is pre-occupied solely on something like LNG, this is what happens, they lose focus on industries that have kept the north going for many decades and it’s a sustainable sector as well.”
Steps need to be taken immediately to see what assistance the families affected require, Donaldson said.
“There needs to be an emergency team put in place like was done in Burns Lake for the community to see what supports there can be for the workers and their families,” he said.
The West Fraser mill was the second-highest District of Houston taxpayer, with a 2013 bill of $618,000. It and Canfor are currently paying about half of all property taxes in the community.
Houston Forest Products officially opened Aug. 16,1978.
At the time, HFP employed 220 people directly and produced 150 MFBM annually, operating two shifts a day.
- With files from Jackie Lieuwen