A third shift will be starting at the Louisiana Pacific Engineered Wood Products Ltd in Golden as of July.
The confirmation of the added shift was made by Bryce Piggot, Manager of LP Engineered Wood Products Ltd.
“Currently the mill is working on a two-shift basis, but running a condensed week so people are working 12-hour shifts,” he said. “We are adding a third shift back to the mill as of July 1.”
This means the LP facility will be returning to a schedule that will see it running three, eight-hour shifts a day, that run from Monday to Friday.
In preparation for the added shift, LP has hired about 50 people.
The reason for the additional shift has to do with multiple factors according to Piggot.
“A couple of things have happened. One is that Louisiana Pacific has moved the majority of its exports orders to the Golden mill for production. This increased the volume required from the mill,” he said. “We are also doing this in anticipation of the increase demand in housing starts and improvements in North America.”
Recently the workers at the facility have been working a great deal of overtime to meet the needs of the customers, and there is hope to see even more growth in the future.
“There are indications and signs of improvements mostly in the United States. Canada has remained fairly stable but we do see an improvement in domestic and foreign demand,” Piggot said.
He said he was very happy this was happening and is hopeful it will help the community as well.
“It is great news for the area. At the peak we were at 400 plus employees. We are now going to be scratching back up to the high 200s. It is not where it was, but we are working to get back there.”
Piggot did add that this is a step in the right direction for the business but they know there is still great deal of work to do.
“We do expect the road to be rough. We do not expect the road to go back up where it was to be a smooth one. It will be bumpy but we do expect to see improvement.”
