The Lakeland Mills site was eerily quiet Wednesday morning.
Despite the explosion and fire that destroyed the sawmill at the downtown Prince George facility, the adjacent planer factory has been running since May. It was a temporary project to smooth the boards already cut before the sawmill blew up on April 23.
The inventory ran out on Tuesday and the machines went silent Wednesday.
According to Greg Stewart, president of Sinclar Group Forest Products, majority owners of Lakeland, the planer processed 7,466,000 board-feet of lumber during the temporary run. Most of that was two-by-four studs with some two-by-three, two-by-six and one-by-four orders filled as well.
The post-explosion planing operation generated 10,082 person-hours of work spread among 32 employees. Others were (and continue to be) employed on the log yard and in the District Energy System facility also on the same site.
Stewart said the company has tried to configure some way of milling wood themselves or bringing outside sawn wood into their yard to keep the planer going.
"We have tried to source [milled] materials for that but there just isn't the available volume of that to sustain an operation for a viable period of time. That doesn't preclude the fact that we wouldn't be interested in having those conversations, if those conditions change with any of the milling operations in the area."
As for sawmilling themselves, Stewart said, "At this point we don't have any other options. We have looked at opening [the mothballed] Winton Global Lumber site, setting up small-scale saw lines, but none of those options have proved to be economical so we will not be pursuing those."
The remaining logs on the Lakeland site have been sold to Carrier Lumber. Bundles are already being trucked to the Carrier mill in the BCR Industrial Site and that process is expected to carry on until November.
One part of the Lakeland operation that is carrying on almost as usual is the harvesting of their forest licenses. Instead of milling those trees themselves, however, they are supplying them to other mills calling for a fibre supply. Lakeland's logging contractors are therefore still involved in some ongoing work and the company obligations to harvest their quotas are still being met.
Also being met are the company's obligations to feed the District Energy System and the university's bioenergy furnace with biofuel. Lakeland was using their planer dust for the district system until Wednesday when they began a deal with Canfor's Isle Pierre sawmill to supply both of those biofuel contracts.
With answers from the WorkSafeBC investigation and their insurance company's investigations still outstanding for at least the next few months, Lakeland's industrial activity is now dormant.
"We are very appreciative of those employees who came back to work for us at the planer willingly," said Stewart. "It speaks very strongly to the resiliency and the quality of employees we have, and the attitude and spirit with which they met this challenge."
