West Fraser is cutting 135 jobs from its Fraser Lake and Quesnel sawmills.
West Fraser announced in a Nov. 13 statement that it will permanently curtail approximately 300 million board feet of combined lumber production at its Fraser Lake and Quesnel Sawmills.
The company says the cutback will be realized through the elimination of the third shift at each sawmill.
The shift elimination is expected to impact approximately 60 employees at Fraser Lake and 75 employees at the Quesnel sawmill over the first and second quarter of 2019.
In their statement, West Fraser says they expect to mitigate the impact on affected employees by offering them work opportunities at other West Fraser operations.
The company says the decision to curtail production better aligns West Fraser’s production with current timber supply.
“British Columbia faces a well-documented timber supply shortage owing to the devastating Mountain Pine Beetle infestation. In anticipation of this decline, West Fraser has invested in excess of $500 million in its B.C. assets to improve the safety and competitiveness of its mills to attain maximum value from the available timber resource,” states the company, in their release.
West Fraser produces lumber, LVL, MDF, plywood, pulp, newsprint, wood chips and energy with facilities in Western Canada and the southern United States.
