Ear Falls concessions and a stable wood supply may be key to restart sawmill

President of EACOM Timber, Rick Doman, has said that the costs need to be reduced at the Ear Falls and Sault Ste. Marie sawmills in Ontario before they will be able to restart.

"The cost is very high at (the Ear Falls) operation, and currently lumber markets are really poor," he said. "What we'd like to do over the next three to six months is take a very close look at Ste. Marie and Ear Falls and see if we can develop ways to reduce costs so that they are competitive at the end of the market."

EACOM would like to work with the union to make the Ear Falls sawmill more efficient.

"The Ear Falls mill has a fairly good wood supply, a great community, great employees and it's got good equipment in the mill." But, Doman cautioned, Ontario's new Tenure and Pricing plan for public forests could be detrimental to the start up. "What we need is stable and sustainable wood volumes or it's difficult to put capital into operations."

The Ear Falls was built in 1997 and expanded in 2005, it employed 200 at its peak level and produced 160 million board feet of building studs annually.

Source:

No restart yet for Ear Mills sawmill (Kenora Daily Miner and News)