Four First Nation bands have joined forces to resurrect an idled sawmill.
In February, Joe Alphonse, chairman of the Tsilhqot’in National Government, reopened the old Sigurdson mill in B.C.’s Cariboo-Chilcotin region.
The mill, which has been renamed River West Forest Products, represents a financial investment by four Tsilhqot’in communities.
Alphonse said the project has created 25 jobs for a region hit hard by the forestry sector downturn and launched a new business relationship between First Nations and Chinese lumber buyers.
“It’s created a lot of excitement and opportunity,” Alphonse said.
The bands bought the mill, which is near Hanceville, for a rock-bottom price that was less than $1 million.
They let it sit idle while they developed a business plan and waited for signs of life in the forestry sector.
Within months, Chinese buyers were on the mill’s doorstep looking to buy rough lumber.
“We weren’t advertising, we weren’t marketing and they were showing up,” Alphonse said.
River West began churning out rough-cut lumber on one shift last month, but Alphonse hopes to get the operation up to two shifts soon.
He said the mill uses only mountain pine beetle-killed trees in an effort to process the Interior’s vast stands of dead trees.
“We’re surrounded by dead forest, and this mill is earmarked to deal with strictly the dead forest that’s standing around us,” he said. “In our view, the mill is part of the solution, part of converting the lodge pole pine back to a living stand.”
He wants the mill to expand further, but to do so it needs a more reliable power source.
River West currently gets half its power from BC Hydro and the other half from diesel generators.
Alphonse said that’s made the project “very costly.”
The Tsilhqot’in have proposed a biomass electrical generation plant to serve the mill and chip and burn trees for power, but BC Hydro rejected the project.
The community is researching power alternatives to lower the mill’s costs and keep it afloat, but, right now, Alphonse said the bands are proud of their efforts to pull together and start a business.
“We have to continue to look and research and develop the best plan possible, but the reality is maybe we’ll have the same fate as Sigurdson,” he said. “If that’s the case, that’s our own and we’ll do that on our own. We’ll learn.”