Tolko Industries will be cutting back at it’s operations at the Quest Wood mill in Quesnel.
Larry Broadfoot, General Manager, Lumber, Plywood Sales & Marketing, says the reduction is necessary due to continued market challenges in China.
He says those challenges include Lumber market prices and less demand.
Broadfoot says Quest Wood will run at current capacity until mid-October when the existing fibre inventory will be consumed.
He says at that point they will be delivering a higher quality log, focusing on green timber as opposed to beetle kill, which will reduce the volume of lumber available. Production will fall in half from 200 million board feet a year to 100.
The mill employs 224 people.
Quesnel Mayor Bob Simpson says his first thought on the Tolko curtailment is with the employees that will be affected.
Simpson says they will now need to work with the Province to make sure that those employees get the kind of support that they will need.
His also voiced frustration with the Provincial Government…
“I am increasingly becoming frustrated with a provincial government that is going overboard to bring into existence an industry that doesn’t exist, doesn’t pay corporate taxes and doesn’t employ one person in the province; the LNG industry. Meanwhile we have our forest industry and our mining sector asking the government for assistance.”
Simpson says those industries employ real people and pay corporate and payroll taxes.
He says that future fibre supply has been an outstanding issue for 5 or 6 years now and that Quesnel and the entire area needs answers to questions about how we commercialize and make viable the harvesting in our area.
with files from My Cariboo Now
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