DOWNTIME IN B.C. AND NS
Louisiana-Pacific Corporation (LP) has announced that effective today, it will curtail oriented strand board (OSB) production at its Dawson Creek, B.C., mill.
The company says the mill, which was built in 1987, will continue to manufacture LP TechShield Radiant Barrier Sheathing to support its customers’ needs in West Coast markets.
Only 26 of the Dawson Creek mill’s 114 employees will be retained to operate the TechShield Radiant Barrier line, and maintain the plant and equipment. Most of the employee reductions will take place after winterization and preparations for press shutdown are completed.
LP’s executive vice president of OSB Jeff Wagner said, “Today and in the future, our Dawson mill has a role to play in our company. We will continue to run the TechShield Radiant Barrier line there, and we firmly believe that we will resume OSB press production at the mill as housing starts to improve. We are maintaining our wood license and mill equipment to be ready to resume press production when housing activity permits.”
At the other side of the country, the Province of Nova Scotia is working to save jobs in the forestry industry that would be lost after recently announced downtime starts at the NewPage Port Hawkesbury paper mill. Premier Darrell Dexter was in Port Hawkesbury yesterday to announce that a program will be in place for the woodland contractors to keep them moving wood and fibre, noting that the forest industry jobs are important to the province. "We want to protect those jobs, as you know there are 400 jobs there," he said. "We are going to have that (the program) in place by the time the first machine is due to be idled."
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