Five northern B.C. sawmills shutting down for one week this month

West Fraser employees at its sawmills across the region will be off the clock for a short period of time this month.

In a Monday (June 3) news release, the lumber company announced its temporarily shutting down production, including all mill activities at five northern B.C. mills for one week in June.

The mills in question include Quesnel, Fraser Lake, Williams Lake, Chetwynd, and Smithers.

The release explains the curtailment is to due to sustained weak pricing in global lumber markets and high log costs, set to reduce the work by 30 million board feet of product.

Altogether, in terms of combined curtailments in the last six month, West Fraser has seen 125 million board feet in temporary capacity curtailments and 300 million in permanent ones.

No specific dates, in terms of when production will end and start back up again, were provided in the update.