Aspen Planers is cutting back from two shifts to one at its Merritt sawmill, beginning on Monday.
As a result 50 people at the mill were given layoff notices today, according to director of communications, Brian Menzies.
Menzies says forestry companies across the province are hurting.
“We’ve seen the price of lumber drop by half since last year. We’ve seen onerous costs at the border because of the softwood lumber duties that have been put in place,” he told Radio NL. “And then the amount of trees that we can harvest is being reduced each year, and it makes it difficult to access those trees and get them back to mills such as ours where communities depend on it.”
Menzies says altogether about 200 people will be affected, with the 150 people being contractors and suppliers.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Merritt says job losses to one of its biggest employers announced today are devastating for the city.
Linda Brown says the job losses come as the market for B.C. logs is becoming increasingly difficult.
“There’s not a whole lot of fibre out there. It’s creating a lot of job loss, a lot of layoffs. And there will be more to come I believe; we’ve got four smaller mills that are also really struggling with fibre. They have told us a similar event is going to happen, they can’t continue with the way the allocations are at this point in time,” Brown says.
“I don’t know what the outcome will be for the city. It’s devastating news right now. But we will try to work with the employees. We have heard from the ministry that said, they would come up the way they did with Tolko, and work with some of the employees who have been laid off.”
The Tolko Mill shut down in Merritt in December of 2016, which led to just over 200 job losses in the city. Today’s announcement by Aspen Planers comes in the same month that Tolko has announced it will be shutting down its mill in Quesnel, cutting 90 jobs at its mill in Kelowna, and as it has began a two-week shut down at its mills in Armstrong and Soda Creek.
– with files from Colton Davies
