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Brink closes remanufacturing plant
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Prince George Citizen
Gordon Hoekstra
Brink Forest Products announced Monday its lumber remanufacturing plant is being shut down indefinitely at the end of March, as Canfor Corp. has decided not to continue supplying low-grade lumber under contract. John Brink, owner of Brink Forest Products, says the company needs a long-term, secure supply of low-grade lumber to make the enterprise economically feasible. "After lengthy attempts to convince both Canfor and the B.C. government of the merits of local remanufacturing, our reman plant will be shutting down indefinitely after 30 years," said Brink. "Canfor has already given notice that they will stop sending low-grade lumber to the mill effective last Friday, and that we will have to process what's now on the ground before the end of March," added Brink.
Brink said about 100 jobs will be impacted by the remanufacturing plant shutdown, but he's given assurances that those employees will be absorbed into the company's new finger-joint operations. "The real shame of the situation is that we had planned to create new jobs in the region, rather than replace existing jobs," said Brink. The low-grade lumber had been re-cut and turned into higher-value products at Brink's remanufacturing plant off of River Road in the CNR industrial site. Canfor had been supplying the low-grade lumber to Brink since 1996, and then selling it themselves under Canfor wrap.
The program was started in 1996, at the beginning of the five-year U.S.-Canada softwood lumber quota agreement, because it made sense then, said Canfor official Hans Thur. Under the softwood agreement, you always tried to ship the highest-quality lumber under quota, said Thur. Each company could ship an amount of lumber duty-free into the U.S. each year. Once a company reached its quota level, it started paying a penalty to ship lumber across the border. So, turning low-grade lumber into a higher-grade product was the right thing to do for Canfor, said Thur. But that changed with the latest round in the softwood lumber trade fight, he said. Now that companies have to pay 21 per cent of softwood lumber exports to the U.S., it means it no longer makes sense to add value to lumber here before shipping it across the border, said Thur. It's all but killed lumber remanufacturing in B.C., he said. "It's not specific to John Brink. If you talk to other remanners closer to the border they had the same thing, people in Alberta the same thing," said Thur.
Most remanufacturers have shifted to finger-joint lumber, including Brink Forest Products, added Thur. In that process, small pieces of wood, called trim ends, are glued together with finger joints to create longer pieces of lumber. The trim blocks cost less than the low-grade lumber, and there's also a market for finger-jointed lumber in the Lower Mainland, said Thur. He said Canfor supports several manufacturers in northern B.C. with trim blocks, including in Mackenzie, Vanderhoof and Houston, as well as Brink in Prince George.
©Copyright 2005 Prince George Citizen
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