Operations at Canfor’s sawmill in Fort St. John will be reduced to four days a week as part of schedule and production cuts across Western Canada.
The company said Wednesday that operating schedules at its sawmills would be reduced starting April 4 “due to the cumulative effects of the unprecedented global supply chain crisis that has been ongoing for several months.”
“We are experiencing extreme supply chain challenges that are significantly impacting our operations and it has become imperative to reduce operating schedules to address our unsustainable inventory levels,” CEO Don Kayne said in a statement.
The reduced schedules will last for a minimum of four weeks and cut production capacity by a minimum of 100 million board feet. The Fort St. John mill will operate on a four-day week instead of the current five-day week.
Canfor says mills are developing site-specific plans “to identify maintenance projects and other activities to best accommodate requests to work during the downtime.”
“We regret the impact that the reduced operating schedules will have on our employees, contractors and communities and we will make efforts to mitigate the negative effects,” said Kayne. “We will continue to leverage our global operating platform to minimize disruptions in supply to our customers.”
Earlier this week, the company said it was extending the curtailment of its Taylor pulp mill by another six weeks – also due to rail issues and a backlog of inventory. The pulp mill has been curtailed since mid-February.
Canada’s freight rail system has been hammered by a series of interruptions, starting with a global pandemic that caused global supply chain bottlenecks and interuptions, followed by wild fires last summer, then floods, which took out rail lines in B.C. and, more recently, labour strife at Canadian Pacific Railway.
- with file from Nelson Bennett
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