Written by MARK NIELSEN
Citizen staff
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Sunday, 30 November 2008 |
The demand for paper, cardboard and other recyclable items has dropped so low that Metro Materials Recovery Inc. is selling its product at a loss, says plant manager Darren Wahl.
Over a two-month span, the price for cardboard and paper has dropped to $20 from $120 per tonne and, as a result, Wahl said Metro Prince George is losing between $65 and $80 on every tonne it ships out.
But he said there are no plans to reduce the amount it processes -- about 700 tonnes of paper a month -- and encouraged residents to continue to drop off their recyclables at the city's transfer stations.
"It's counterproductive to have this huge recycling movement, as strong as it is in Prince George right now, to all of a sudden everyone slamming on the brakes and saying the sky is falling and start sending everything to the dump," Wahl said.
"We're going to be here for the long haul and we need to weather the storm."
To offset some of the loss, Wahl said he's been charging larger accounts a pick-up fee but not to the point where it becomes cheaper to ship their product to the landfill. The relatively small size of the Prince George operation has been working to Metro's benefit, he added, noting sister plants in larger cities process between 5,000 and 25,000 tonnes a month, which translates into a larger total loss.
None of Metro's 26 employees have been layed-off so far, and Metro is in the process to moving into a new location in the Danson industrial park that covers 70,000 square feet, compared to the 27,000 square feet of its current home.
It cost Metro about $2 million to renovate the site, an old sawmill, according to Wahl, using entirely recycled materials.
"That's our commitment to Prince George, the regional district and the north as a whole and that's how we see our future moving," Wahl said.
Customers, particularly in Asia, who've been buying up as much product as they could find have now reversed their direction in the face of troubling economic times. As well, concerns about the health of the North American car industry has sparked a drop in the price of steel.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 30 November 2008 )
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