News — 20 July 2010
Eacom President Rick Doman says costs will have to come down before his company can restart the idled Ear Falls Sawmill.
The company became the official owners of the former Domtar operation on July 1 and Doman says his board is working on potential opportunities to restart the facility.
“The cost is very high at that operation, and currently the lumber markets are really poor. They’ve fallen dramatically,” says Doman.
Doman feels a lot of the volatility was expected and believes that the US housing recovery won’t get into full swing until 2011. He feels the market will rise dramatically within the next year, and the industry has to be patient.
“What we’d like to do over the next three to six months is take a very close look at St. Marie and Ear Falls and see if we can develop ways to reduce costs so that they’re competitive at this end of the market.”
While the biggest issues at the Ear Falls mill aren’t with the equipment, Doman says there is a need to work with the union to make the mill more efficient. Doman feels they have reason to believe Eacom and the union have a common goal and there should be no issues.
“The Ear Falls mill has a fairly good wood supply area, a great community, great employees and it’s got good equipment in the mill,” he says.
Doman feels that the Ontario government Tenure and Pricing Proposal could be detrimental to the start of the Ear Falls mill if adopted.
“What we need is stable and sustainable wood volume or it’s difficult to put capital into operations,” confirms Doman. “The problem is if the government goes that route, security and surety of supply could be threatened, and if that’s the case, what’s the incentive to put money into operations if you don’t know if you’re going to have the wood or not.”
By Ally Dunham
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