Mill recalls employees
Published Saturday November 7th, 2009
Refurbishment: Fraser Papers set to reopen Plaster Rock mill after nine-month closure
After nine months of deafening silence, the saws at Fraser Papers Inc. lumber mill in Plaster Rock will once again be humming in a little more than a week.
The company announced Friday it has recalled about 175 employees who will gradually begin returning to the work rotation on Nov. 16.
It's a reopening that was in doubt, especially when the company filed for protection from its creditors in June.
"We plan to restart the mill on Nov. 16," said Paul McKinley, general manager of the company's sawmill operations in New Brunswick and Maine. "The major refurbishment is almost complete and we're eager to get the workers back.
"We're the major employer in this community and surrounding communities and a lot of jobs are offshoots from the mill - logging, trucking, silviculture and all the businesses that supply the mill. Fraser started a mill here in 1906 - that makes it even more important to try to keep it going. We have fifth-generation workers at the mill now."
The mill's reopening will restore a sense of pride in a community that had been experiencing a great deal of anxiety since the plant closed last February, said Plaster Rock Mayor Judy St. Peter.
"It's great news because it affects our whole community - all the families and the businesses," St. Peter said. "There's been a real sense of uncertainty in our community and this will return optimism. There will be more money to spend in the community and people will feel better about the community."
The mill had begun a major refurbishment project before the company was forced to seek protection under the Companies Creditors Arrangement Act. The $17-million project was financed through a loan from Business New Brunswick. McKinley said the project was completed under budget and will make the mill much more efficient and competitive.
"The budget for the project was $17.6 million and we are going to complete the final stages by the end of the month and we'll be under budget," he said. "I have to credit the resourcefulness of our employees - they found ways of salvaging some of the things that we took out and reutilizing them wherever we could. We scrambled and improvised to do things as efficiently as we could."
The company used employees who would otherwise have been laid off to do much of the refurbishment work.
"We used our entire maintenance crew - the millwrights, electricians and welders - who perform the regular maintenance at the mill, to work with a few outside contractors to work on the refurbishment project," McKinley said. "They've been there since Day 1 and they're still there today wrapping things up.
"We took out hundreds of tons of equipment and replaced it with hundreds of tons of new equipment. It was quite a feat to watch the men work. They did it without the benefit of an overhead crane and without removing any section of the roof and they did it without a single safety incident."
The refurbishment included the installation of a new biomass-fired boiler that will allow the mill to use bark as a fuel, instead of oil.
"Prior to this, we were using more than five million litres of oil on an annual basis - that's a lot of money and a lot of greenhouse gas," McKinley said. "That's a huge improvement from a cost perspective and from an environment perspective."
The boiler is designed to someday be equipped with a turbine, he said.
"When that time comes, the boiler will be capable of generating somewhere in the order of five-plus megawatts of green electricity," the company will be able to use or sell. "That's part of the strategic planning we did; this wasn't just a band-aid. We wanted move into the future with a secure, stable operation.
"Credit the company for making the decision and to the province for making the loan, because without them it never would have happened. The outlook here would have been very dismal if we had to count on still burning five million litres of oil."
McKinley said the mill's unionized employees deserve credit for their resilience during the shutdown and for signing a new contract.
"Actually, it's a labour agreement that is concessionary in nature, so it shows the commitment our employees have and the fact they recognize the realities we're up against," he said. "They're doing their share and contributing what they can to make this a successful business.
"One of the interesting things is that we've also negotiated a provision for profit-sharing. When things can improve, which everybody is predicting in the lumber business, we'll be able to share part of those gains with our employees."
Fraser Papers was recently granted an extension of its creditor protection and expects to present a restructuring plan to its creditors by Dec. 4.
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