Pulp mill warehouse to find use by container port

There will finally be some employment taking place at the Watson island pulp mill, though it will have nothing to do with the production of pulp and paper.

While the China Paper group continues along its glacial pace to doing something with its investment, they’ll at least be making some rent as Canadian Border Services and Quickload Terminals sets up shop in the warehouse and administration buildings on Watson Island, as they wait for their own warehouse to be built on site at Fairview.

It’s expected that they’ll be on Watson Island until at least June of 2008, which one would gather (and certainly won’t be a surprise to Rupertities) means there are apparently no plans in place to be producing pulp at the mill any time in the near future.

The Daily News had full details on the new use for the pulp warehouse in Thursday’s paper.

CONTAINER SEARCHES TO TAKE PLACE AT PULP MILL
By Kris Schumacher
The Daily News
Friday, August 10, 2007

With the Fairview Container Terminal prepared to begin operations in October, the temporary inspection facility for incoming containers will be a portion of the old pulp mill on Watson Island.
While the permanent bonded warehouse on Ridley Island is constructed in hopes of becoming operational by the summer of 2008, the Prince Rupert Port Authority has announced that the alternate facility has been secured for the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) and Quickload Terminals to operate in the meantime.

"What's happened is, from the time Quickload won the contract to provide the container examination facility service up until they looked at what the needs were, demand actually increased beyond what they initially thought it was going to be," said Barry Bartlett, communications manager at the Prince Rupert Port Authority.

"What that meant was they were going to need to build a bigger facility. So what's happened is they've acquired the use of the administration building and warehousing facilities at the Watson Island facility, that they can use basically until they're finished the new building."

This decision was the outcome of negotiations between Quickload Terminals and the China Paper Group, the Chinese-state owned company, that purchased the facilities from New Skeena Forest Products when it declared bankruptcy in 2006.

"We're excited, and the whole community is excited because it's something you can really touch now," said Mark Schepp, general manager of operations for Maher Terminals in Prince Rupert.
"Later this month you'll see the cranes arrive, which I think will be a big event, and as we move towards an October start-up we're getting more excited and ready to go as we build our team here."

While having the permanent facility on Ridley Island ready for October would have been the ideal situation, Maher Terminals is confident that things will be running smoothly until such time as the new facility is ready.

"We're going to work with CBSA, and they'll let us know what boxes have to go there and we'll have to make them available for Quickload to get them there," said Schepp.

"We would load them onto a truck and have them transported to the facility, and once they're examined they would return to the terminal."

"We are certainly involved with the folks there about coordinating the operation of putting in the place the procedures for the movement of containers from the marine terminal and their facility," said Frans van Riemsdyk, vice president of sales and marketing at Maher Terminals.
The Prince Rupert Port Authority is also optimistic about the quality of the Watson Island facility, and that it will more than suffice for the purposes of the CBSA and Quickload.

"In fact the warehouse and administration building out there are beyond what their needs are, so it's a very good interim facility. They'll have the newer, bigger and better container examination facility completed by June 2008," said Bartlett.

"It's worked out well, and we think that there's not even going to be any short-term inconvenience because the quality of these interim facilities, so it's business as usual."

The Watson Island Pulp Mill used to employ up to 500 workers and was part of a forestry company that provided direct and indirect employment to thousands of people in the northwest.
The China Paper Group said it has been seeking funding to operate the pulp mill and has an agreement with the city to operate the mill in exchange for a deal under which it pays no tax for the first five years of operation. That deal is void should the mill not start by Jan. 1, 2008.