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Eacom’s Timmins sawmill to restart this year

Construction crews are rebuilding what fire destroyed 18 months ago at a Timmins sawmill.
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Construction crews are rebuilding what fire destroyed 18 months ago at a Timmins sawmill

Construction crews are rebuilding what fire destroyed 18 months ago at a Timmins sawmill.

Eacom’s facility, on the Mattagami River, is undertaking a $25-million reconstruction project after a fire in January 2012 destroyed the main saw line area, which included the major saw, the debarking area and the primary break-down area.

“Construction is continuing throughout the summer,” said Rick Collins, Eacom’s president and COO of sales and operations.

“We are targeting some time late in the third quarter to restart operations. A full construction crew is working there seven days a week and we are bringing in a brand new saw line, so it will be a brand new mill when we are done.”

The rebuilding began in December 2012 and USNR Kockums Cancar Inc. was contracted for the project. A substantial portion of the project has been funded from proceeds of insurance related to the fire.

“The equipment there wasn’t bad, but the buildings and infrastructure were the oldest in all of our company. They had cobbled together a lot of things over the years,” he said.

The sawmill’s efficiency will be improved, which will allow the company to better compete and bring cash costs down.

There will be two shifts, and approximately the same number of employees will be working, with 100 to 110 between staff and union.

“It’s very similar to what we had before,” Collins said. While the mill has been shut down, other sawmills had to pick up the loss of capacity, and mills at Nairn and Elk Lake were running extra shifts when they could. Eacom also improved operations at those mills.

The new saw will have a larger capacity, about 20 per cent more, with the ability to use more wood than it did before. However, it is not expected to grow in the future, due to the constrictions of the site. “There was need for capitalization at Timmins, but the fire just advanced it to an earlier stage,” he said.

“We are close to what we can do with the site that we have, but we did build the mill to maximize the capacity that we could put through there efficiently, but that is where we will stay.”

The mill saws larger diameter material, which produces bigger, wider boards that are of higher value. Eacom is expecting the forest industry to pick up in the long term, and there was a rebound the first part of 2013, with a bit of a correction in May and early June.

“We see the housing market in North America gaining and starting to stabilize and interest rates are low

and unemployment numbers are coming down a bit, so that gives a positive outlook for the future,” Collins said. “It is not going to be immediate and it will still take a while. We are not expecting things to go back to normal within one year. But we are out of the low point we were in during 2010 and 2011.”

The mill is the only remaining one of three major sawmills that once operated in the city. Grant Forest Products’ OSB plant has been dismantled and Tembec’s sawmill has been idled for about six years. A smaller sawmill, Little John Enterprises, still operates in Timmins.

“We are looking forward to having the mill back in production and having our employees back full time, and participating with the community. It took us a while, but in the end it will be a very good project for the employees, for Eacom and the city,” he said.

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