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Brink sawmill in works
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By Gordon Hoekstra
The Prince George Citizen, October 8, 2005
Brink Forest Products is investing $5 million to $10 million to build a sawmill, part of a plan to create a more-integrated forest company and better secure raw material for its secondary manufacturing plants.
The concrete foundation for the mill is nearly in place at the BCR Industrial Site, and John Brink, the company’s president, expects the mill to be running by February.
"We’re building a unique sawmill, that will supply our existing secondary manufacturing plants, secure our supply of raw materials, as well as creating 100 jobs," said Brink. "I think that’s important for Prince George."
The equipment for the sawmill - most of which Brink bought two years ago from a mothballed mill in Smithers, 370 kilometres west of Prince George - is on site.
The mill will include two lumber cutting lines - one for bigger timber and another for smaller logs. It will produce about 150 million board feet a year on two shifts.
The sawmill is being built on 40 hectares of land where one of the Netherlands sawmills sat, a place Brink, a Dutch immigrant, first started working when he came to Canada.
To feed the new sawmill, Brink is hoping to tap into the huge increase in timber available from the mountain pine beetle epidemic.
The Province has significantly increased the amount of logging allowed each year, both to help slow the epidemic’s spread and salvage timber before it decays. In the Quesnel, Prince George-Vanderhoof and Burns Lake areas, the increase in logging amounts to 80 per cent.
The province has pledged to put up more timber for open bid through its B.C. Timber Sales program, and has also tailored timber licences to encourage entrants that don’t produce lumber into the forest sector. It was an effort by the B.C. Liberal government not to increase production of lumber in the midst of the softwood trade dispute with the U.S., where B.C. producers face steep tariffs.
The highest bidders for two of the largest tailored licences include Ainsorth Lumber, which has said it plans to build two panel plants in north-central B.C. and C.H. Anderson, which along with two Swedish partners, plans to build several wood pellet plants in the North.
But Brink says the province also needs to look at the next best option of putting up timber rights to companies that want to get into the primary lumber production to push that lumber up the value-added chain.
Brink said he believe the B.C. government has made a commitment to do that, but would like to see it act on it. "I presume they’re working on it, but the time has come to make it happen," he said.
Brink says 50 per cent of the lumber produced at the sawmill would be used to produce products from finger-jointed lumber to furniture. Finger-jointed lumber - a product that Brink pioneered in western Canada - is made by gluing small pieces of lumber together using a specialized joint. It creates a consistently straight product that brings a premium price.
Making more timber available, specifically to secondary manufacturers, is also important because they’ll help the regional economy prepare for the decrease in timber supply 10 to 15 years from the beetle epidemic, added Brink.
Moving up the value chain creates more jobs per tree, which will be needed because less timber means fewer jobs, he said.
There is still timber available from a significant increase in timber harvesting announced in the fall of 2004, but the forests ministry has made no new announcements on timber rights since early this year.
Recently, Brink has been in an aggressive expansion mode.
He announced on Monday his company had purchased Palliser Lumber in Alberta, creating Canada’s largest lumber remanufacturing operation.
At the end of 2003, the company announced it had bought Pleasant Valley Remanufacturing in Houston, 300 kilometres west of Prince George. The plant produces wood blocks which are the feed material for finger-jointing. In 2004, Brink added a pair of finger-joint manufacturing lines at his operations in Prince George.
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