The employee-owned Harmac pulp mill received $1 million from BC Hydro Wednesday for an efficiency retrofit that will reduce the mill’s energy needs by 3.7 gigawatt hours per year – enough electricity to power 340 homes.
Nanaimo Forest Products Ltd. is using the funding to modernize the vacuum pump system at the mill, which is located near Nanaimo.
BC Hydro's Power Smart Partners Industrial Program offers financial incentives and resources to help the industrial sector, which BC Hydro estimates uses about one third of the total electricity consumed in B.C. each year, reduce its energy.
The industrial sector represents approximately 45% of annual savings generated by the Power Smart program.
"Energy conservation is one of our key business strategies and it makes good business sense since it enables us to reduce energy supply – one of our major costs of doing business," said Levi Sampson, Nanaimo Forest Products’ president.
Employees of the mill created Nanaimo Forest Products in 2008.
Pope & Talbot closed the mill that year, but employees pooled their money to buy it out of receivership. (See “Union adopts sales role to save defunct paper mills” – issue 1082; July 20 to 26, 2010.)