Elk Lake’s new planing mill is a step forward in time, says manager Mark Stevens.
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Mill employees were relieved to hear their place of work would be rebuilt within hours of it burning to the ground. Pedersen Construction Corp., which built the above foundation, supplied the photo. |
After a March 17 fire that resulted in the total destruction of the original 40-year-old operation and the loss of millions of dollars, the same-day decision to rebuild came as a relief to employees. Now, the Domtar/New Liskeard Lumber company is well on its way to building a state-of-the-art mill, maintaining a competitive edge in a struggling industry.
“The fire was devastating, and yet the quick decision to rebuild it was quite a relief,” says Stevens.
The sawmill, which employs 90 full-time hourly workers plus 20 administrative and supervisory staff, absorbed some of the impact from the loss of the planing mill. A third shift at the sawmill was planned for April, part of Domtar’s and Tembec’s restructuring operations in northeastern Ontario.
Consequently, of the 32 employees displaced by the fire, many shifted over to the sawmill, which remained intact. Others voluntarily chose a layoff, and
some lumber graders went to work at the Chapleau mill.
Rough lumber from the sawmill is being shipped up to the Chapleau and Hearst planing mills until the construction is completed, tentatively set for November.
Stevens says he sees the decision to rebuild as an acknowledgment of past successes. Doubling its space to 30,000 square feet, the over $10 million facility will perform the same functions as the previous one, which smooths, trims, sorts, grades and separates wood by lengths and dimensions.
However, newer technology will allow greater efficiencies in operations.
“The new planer will be capable of running at 2,000 feet per minute and just doing a much better quality job,” says Stevens. “The newer equipment will eliminate the bottlenecks that we had in the mill and improve the operating efficiency of the mill.”
One piece of machinery the plant is considering is a lumber grader that uses cameras and X-rays. Although in the end it will trade off labour positions, Stevens believes you end up with more high-tech jobs to maintain and run the equipment.
With the newer and more efficient equipment, Stevens says, only a shift-and-a-half will be required, so he is unsure how many people will be hired.
“It is a matter of achieving a balance between the two mills,” he says. “We’ll start up slow and hire over several months.”
Given the competitiveness of the industry, Stevens sees this as enabling Elk Lake to be as competitive as other operations.
