Canfor Pulp Products Inc. has shutdown its Taylor Pulp mill for a further six weeks due to trouble shipping its product.
“Unfortunately, the ongoing rail transportation situation has not improved, and we have no choice but to extend the current production curtailment,” said operations vice president Kevin Anderson in a statement issued Tuesday. “We are very disappointed in the ongoing impact this is having on our employees, their families and the community.”
The extension will further reduce production by at least 25,000 tonnes and continues on a six-week shutdown invoked in mid-February, that also amounted to 25,000 tonnes, and a four-week shutdown invoked in early December.
The mill will remain completely shut down with a skeleton crew remaining on site to keep the operation safe and secure and facilitate shipments as they receive rail cars, a Canfor spokesperson said and confirmed about 110 employees are affected,
The mill, located in the community midway between Dawson Creek and Fort St. John in northeast B.C., produces bleached chemi-thermo mechanical pulp and has annual production capacity of 230,000 tonnes.
Canfor Pulp also owns and operates three mills in Prince George, with a total capacity of 1.1 million tonnes of premium reinforcing northern bleached softwood kraft pulp and 140,000 tonnes of kraft paper.
Just prior to Christmas, the company said a production line at Northwood will be shut down for 85 to 100 days to rebuild the lower furnace at mill’s number one recovery boiler.
The work was going well and the operation was expected to return to full production at the end of the first quarter, analysts were told during a conference call earlier this month.
The project was expected to cost $30 million and reduce the mill’s pulp production by 68,000 to 80,000 tonnes.
- with files from The Canadian Press
