The highway between Terrace and Rupert will soon be full of chip trucks again, as Northwest chips to be milled at the old Carnaby site in the Hazeltons; will soon be heading west to be shipped south to the Pope and Talbot operation on Vancouver Island.
The Skeena Cellulose site at Watson Island will be the loading zone, as barges will arrive alongside the dock there and loaded up with the chips from the Hazletons to be shipped south to the Harmac mill in Nanaimo.
The move by Pope and Talbot is seen as one of consolidating its hold on some of the fibre of the northwest, as they struggle to find new sources of wood to keep the Harmac operation going strong. With recent closures of sawmills on the island the Harmac mill has had to travel further and further in recent months to find a reliable supply.
They have signed a long term arrangement with Sun Wave the owners of the Watson Island site, and have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up their shipment point there. They also purchased the mountain of chips that has sat there since 2001, for use in their mills.
The moves will leave many in the local area wondering if there is a plan to operate the pulp mill here as a going concern by Sun Wave, or if instead it will just become the shipment point of the Northwests resources out of the area. If the fibre supply is controlled by another company and they’re using your dock to ship the product away, questions will arise as to what the status is of the operational plan that at one time suggested a spring re-opening of the mothballed pulp mill.
The Terrace Standard has all the details on the Pope and Talbot plans on line.
NORTHWESTERN FIBRE HEADING DOWN SOUTH
The Terrace Standard
December 13, 2006
A MAJOR pulp producer is ramping up its northwestern presence using portions of former Skeena Cellulose facilities now owned by a Chinese company.
Pope and Talbot already ships out approximately 200,000 cubic metres of chips a year from the northwest to its Harmac kraft mill at Nanaimo on Vancouver Island but calculates it can double that by putting in a whole log chipper in the Hazeltons.
That chipper is on the former Skeena Cellulose Carnaby sawmill site, now owned by a company that’s part of the China Paper Group.
In turn the chips will be trucked to Prince Rupert and loaded on to barges at the long-closed Skeena Cellulose pulp mill location now owned by Sun Wave Forest Products which is also part of China Paper Group.
And, Pope and Talbot officials expect a good portion of the fibre to come from forest lands in the Hazeltons which used to be controlled by Skeena Celluolose.
That fibre is held under the Carnaby forest licence Sun Wave acquired when it bought Skeena Cellulose assets but it was sold over the weekend to a company controlled by Gitxsan hereditary chiefs on whose land the licence is located.
Transporting chips from the northwest down to Nanaimo is expensive but Pope and Talbot doesn’t have much choice, says company official Mike Hovey who is in charge of buying fibre for Harmac and for its other B.C. pulp mill in Mackenzie.
Reeling off a list of sawmill closures and company consolidations on Vancouver Island, Hovey said Pope and Talbot needs to go farther afield to buy fibre.
“We’ve seen all those chips lost to us,” he said of closures and consolidations.
But Hovey is also staking out territory in anticipation of the eventual end of the bug wood logging now going on throughout the interior.
Logging has acclerated in the interior to cut wood before the mountain pine beetle infestatation makes it worthless. But that will lead to shortages when the bug kill wood is eventually logged out.
That’ll make this region’s forest lands a hot commodity and Pope and Talbot wants to have an established presence, he said.
“We believe there’ll be some challenges in the interior,” Hovey added.
Pope and Talbot is renting the land for the whole log chipping operation at Carnaby but the chipper itself belongs to another company.
Hovey said Pope and Talbot will buy as much wood as can be taken to the site.
“What we’re doing is recyling,” he said of the purchase of chips to be turned into pulp. “We’re really the original recyclers.”
Sawlog portions will more than likely end up at nearby Kitwanga Lumber Company.
Pope and Talbot is also investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in putting together a facility for loading barges at the old pulp mill location in Prince Rupert.
“We have a long term agreement to use that location,” said Hovey.
The company used to barge chips from the Alcan docks in Kitimat but that arrangement subsequently fell through.
Pope and Talbot has also purchased the mountain of chips that have sat at the Prince Rupert pulp mill location since operations shut down in 2001.
Hovey added that while costs are high, he’s been impressed with the efforts being made by the people and companies Pope and Talbot is doing business with in the northwest.
“There’s some smart, competent people up there,” said Hovey.
He said it’s important to realize that people are now working and more will be going to work because of what Pope and Talbot is doing. “This wood would not otherwise be moved,” said Hovey.
“The wood I’m hoping to bring down in nine years out of 10, wouldn’t be moved out.”
Hovey said Pope and Talbot is, for now, benefitting from a strong pulp market and expects that to continue into the next year.
Pope and Talbot used to buy chips from the Terrace Lumber Company but that ended when the mill closed down.
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