Canfor Corp. announced Wednesay it will be temporarily curtailing operations at three B.C.Interior sawmills due to lack of log supply, log costs and lumber market conditions.
Canfor’s sawmill in Vavenby will be curtailed for six weeks from Feb. 11 to March 22. The company’s sawmills in Houston and Mackenzie will be curtailed for one week each during the first quarter of the year, with dates not yet released, Canfor said in a statement.
“In combination, these curtailments will reduce Canfor’s production output by approximately 40 million board feet,” the company said. “This is in addition to the approximately 150 million board feet of production capacity that was curtailed by Canfor in the fourth quarter of 2018 and earlier in 2019.”
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Those reductions were to reduce output by 55 million board feet, including extended downtime during the Christmas season.
The sawmill reductions are a result of “log supply challenges following another difficult wildfire season, uncompetitive log costs and declining lumber prices,” Canfor CEO Don Kayne said in November.
Canfor has 13 sawmills in Canada, with total annual capacity of approximately 3.8 billion board feet.
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