N.B. pulp mill closure hurts truckers, local economy
SAINT JOHN, (Sept. 23, 2004) — The Dominos in Nackawic, N.B. keep falling in the wake of last week’s unexpected closure of the St. Anne-Nackawic pulp mill.
The ripple effects from the mill’s bankruptcy declaration has reached dozens of related businesses and industries including the New Brunswick trucking industry as well as the shipping port in Saint John.
In addition to the 400 mill workers and managers laid off last week, hundreds of truck drivers are looking for new hauling contracts.
Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association President Ralph Boyd told the New Brunswick Telegraph Journal that the Nackawic mill and local truckers were completely reliant on one another. He said that with no rail and water service, the only way to get wood — as well as other forest and chemical or petroleum products — to and from the pulp mill is by truck.
Carriers would then take finished paper products from the mill to storage facilities at the Port of Saint John. The closure is said to cost the port — where 95 per cent of the mill’s production was shipped — millions of dollars, two shipping lines, and about 40 jobs.
The mill’s production is so vital to the local economy that desperate unionized workers recently voted to work for free in an attempt to get the mill running again. But the closure came in the middle of an annual maintenance shutdown, leaving much of the machinery in pieces when the mill closed.
The province announced it has put together a task force to find a buyer for the 35-year-old pulp mill.
When it applied for bankruptcy last week, the St. Anne-Nackawic Pulp Co. owed the province $15 million. All together, the company’s debts total $102 million, which includes $35 million owed to St. Anne Industries, a company owned by St. Anne-Nackawic’s New York-based parent firm, Parsons and Whittemore.
As the company’s only secured creditors, St. Anne Industries and the provincial government will be first in line for funds if the company’s $53 million in assets are sold.
— with files from the New Brunswick Telegraph Journal and Canadian Press
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