Western Forest Products is closing its Ladysmith sawmill on Friday, April 25, for an indefinite period of time. A t…
Western Forest Products is closing its Ladysmith sawmill on Friday, April 25, for an indefinite period of time. A total of 40 employees will be laid off as a result, and according to the Vancouver Sun, the closure will curtail a vital supply of wood chips to nearby pulp and paper mills.
The Ladysmith facility has only been running part of its capacity since last December, when it shut down the larger of its two log lines. The Vancouver Sun confirmed that the small log line, the one which will be affected this week, supplies lumber to the U.S. market and ships entire logs to Catalyst Paper, who uses them as a fibre source for its Crofton pulp facility.
“It’s going to impact the town of Ladysmith,” the Sun reported Arnie Bercov, vice-president of Local 8 of the Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of Canada as saying. “I think we are going to see serious economic fall-out from the downturn of our forest industry. The loss of the Ladysmith mill is a double blow to the Island forest community.”
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