Fredericton sawmill has a huge glut of wood chips
Due to the closure of pulp mills in Maine, Quebec and Nova Scotia the volume of unsold wood chips is constantly increasing.
The owner of Fredericton sawmill says that the lack of wood chip buyers led to a very hard time in their company. In his opinion the reason of it is a significant decrease of business activity in the regional forestry sector. Unsold wood chips have already filled two floors of Devon Lumber mill in Fredericton.
The director of Devon Lumber company Garry Gill tells that despite of big troubles with sale of their production, he’s doing his best to save the wood chip business.
Generally from sawmills wood chips go to pulp mills, yet for the time being such companies in Maine, Quebec and Nova Scotia don’t work,therefore the market is flooded with propositions of extra wood chips.
Gill says that last month the situation worsened, when the biggest forest company JD Irving Ltd stopped buying their wood chips. These are serious company, thus such changes may influence our work tremendously.
At present 40 employees of Devon Lumber work on processing of cedar wood. However, wood chips have always been their main source of profit, thus within the last three weeks the sawmill worked only one day and a half.
Devon Lumber is not the only company around, where warehouses are glutted with wood chips. There are 35 sawmills in the region, some of them process their wood chips by self, but others currently experience big complications with their byproduct sale.
So how to solve the problem with the glut of wood chips?
Mark Arsenault, the president and chief executive of New Brunswick Forest Products Association, affirms that these days our market is overfilled with wood chips. He named several reasons why the amount of unclaimed wood buproducts increases all the time.
Arsenault says that Newpage and Abitibi in Nova Scotia, White Birch mill in Maine and in Quebec don’t run any longer or decreased their purchase amount of pulpwood from New Brunswick. He adds that his association gave recommendations for regional government on how to reduce the existing oversupply of wood chips.
Mr. Gill from Devon Lumber also has an idea about the ways to solve such a problem. One of his recommendations is to leave the part or all pulpwood in the forests to rot. Just leave it there.
According to experts’ opinion, this measure may help in the situation when outlets for wood chips are in such a trouble. Otherwise if the production doesn’t sell, the number of sawmills will become less and less.
