The last thing Woodfibre needs is a work stoppage, but the local pulp mill is facing that possibility due to the tugboat and barge operator strike on the B.C. coast.
Dave Ingram, the Western Pulp Partnership Ltd. mill manager, told The Chief that the chip supply at his mill is going to run out this weekend.
"We mainly use Seaspan," said Ingram. That company is behind picket lines as the Seaspan employees are members of the Canadian Merchant Service Guild (CMSG).
The timing is bad for Western Pulp because the company is a subsidiary of Doman Industries and Doman is currently going through a court ordered restructuring. There is talk of selling portions of the company and a major disruption in operations due to the tugboat and barge operator labour dispute will make an already volatile situation even worse.
"The pulp industry has been down for so many years and then this comes along," said Ingram.
"We just started to make money at the Squamish mill," Ingram noted when contacted by The Chief last week.
Once the chips run out, Ingram said production will stop at Woodfibre. The mill will curtail operations until chips can be brought to the facility on the west side of Howe Sound.
He said stopping production is simple however he noted that it is expensive.
Doman, and other coastal forest companies, use barges extensively to move harvested trees and supplies. If the forest companies are not able to move their trees and supplies for any length of time some logging operations will be forced to shut down and that will lead to sawmill curtailments. When sawmills curtail operations, chips become more difficult to find and pulp mills shut down when chips can't be delivered.
The chips that are vital to the operations at the Woodfibre mill are delivered to the mill by barge from the Doman sawmills on Vancouver Island and on the Fraser River.
"The whole industry will eventually shut down if this isn't resolved," Ingram said.
The labour dispute is between the CMSG and the Council of Marine Carriers. Members of the CMSG stopped work at midnight last Thursday (April 15).
Interfor's Empire Logging is also affected by the dispute. Logs that are brought to the Interfor dryland sort on the Mamquam Blind Channel will have to stay in Squamish until the dispute is resolved.
