To receivership

Uncertain market conditions have placed four area mills into receivership or in the hands of a trustee in bankruptcy, a company official confirmed Thursday.

Thunder Bay’s Great West Timber and Buchanan Northern Hardwoods are in the hands of a bankruptcy trustee, while Northern Sawmills and Atikokan Forest Products have been placed in receivership, said Buchanan Forest Products’ Yves Fricot.

Fricot said it was a difficult day for everyone involved, especially those who had hopes to see the mills re-open and get back to work.

"The first thing that we feel for are the people that worked for us and stayed with the company for so long," he said. "It’s obviously very easy to say ‘geez we really should of foreseen this’ but there were a lot of really good jobs a lot of good people who gave their hearts to these mills."

Fricot said Buchanan had worked with employees and unions at the mills to keep them alive. He said receiver PricewaterhouseCoopers and trustee Grant Thornton Ltd. will not pick up where Buchanan left off to try and market the mills.

"Clearly time has past and we know that’s (Buchanan re-opening) not going to be possible," he said. "Perhaps it’ll happen with somebody else."

When the global economy first collapsed, Fricot said everyone predicted the downturn would only last six months. Now nearly three years later, the U.S. housing market still hasn’t recovered and no one knows when it will.

"They don’t tell us that there can be a turnaround in a timeframe that we can look at," Fricot said.

Atikokan mayor Dennis Brown said the news is devastating. With 225 employees before its closure in 2008, Atikokan Forest Products was the town’s largest employer.

A lot of people left the town for other work but had hoped to come back and even kept houses there. While he had heard rumours of receivership for the past few months, Brown said Atikokan was still hopeful the mill would reopen soon.

"We were always hopeful this would occur at some point but I guess today changes that," Brown said.

He added that the next step for the town council is to help the receiver find a buyer for the mill and maybe get things back on track. He also said he worries about the pensions for those former mill workers left in Atikokan.

"The worst part of it is their pension. That’s devastating for people to be without that. Somehow we have to correct that in the system," Brown said.

But Fricot said receivership will have no effect on pension for those workers from Atikokan or Northern Hardwoods. Workers from Great West Timbre and Northern Sawmills have insured pension plans. Getting those together is part of the receiver’s process.

"One of the things that the receiver will be doing is going through the process of completing the wind-up of the pension plans but we’re hopeful that there will be minimal if no losses to employees on the pension side," said Fricot.

Forestry minister Michael Gravelle said he always hoped the mills would reopen and that he empathizes with the workers and their families.

"This is always very difficult thing," Gravelle said. "It does reflect the challenges certainly that the sawmill industry is facing in the province."