BCBusiness

September/October 2020 – Making It Work

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020 BCBUSINESS 25 The sales numbers told Roger Keery that things were turning around at Skeena Sawmills. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the Terrace mill had sold out its lumber production two months in advance. Its new $20-million wood pellet plant was exceeding expectations. And its wood chips were in demand to make medical protective equipment. But looking beyond the data, the president of Skeena knew the company was bucking the depressing trends of B.C.'s logging industry, made even worse by the pandemic, from how the com- munity was acting. "In Terrace, there's a lot of negative history with forestry, a lot of skepticism that a mill can function here," Keery says. "We're here to challenge that. A big piece of how we'll work through COVID, and how we were operating successfully before, was our rela- tionship with the community." When the pandemic arrived, Skeena donated all the face masks it had on hand to the Terrace hospital and then bought masks from locals for its employees. It was how the company had done things since taking over an existing mill in 2011. People noticed. When the lockdown order came in mid-March, Skeena was days away from start- ing a second shift. As an essential service, opera- tions continued. However, with 20 to 25 percent of Skeena's 200 employees staying home—immune- compromised, in precautionary quarantine, nurs- ing potential symptoms (there was no outbreak at the mill)—adding another shift was impossible. But the rest of the workers, suppliers and con- tractors kept showing up. Some got creative. A lumber yard manager in quarantine would arrive after everyone else went home to inventory the next day's tasks from the confines of his truck. Despite new regulations and health rules, the Port of Prince Rupert kept running, and Skeena managed to stay mostly on schedule. "There's a willingness to roll up the sleeves and help," Keery says. "The community is part of our competitive edge." Keery's rosy attitude isn't a lone voice, but it is lonely, and it contrasts with the news from the rest of the province's forestry sector. "I don't like to use the word crisis, but it is pretty close to a crisis," says Ken Peacock, chief economist at the Business Council of British Columbia. "Everything is absolutely negative," says Russ Taylor, Vancouver-based managing director of wood markets for FEA Canada, a branch of U.S.- headquartered industry tracker Forest Economic Advisors. "I'm afraid to look at the data, it's so neg- ative." B.C. was already one of the more expensive places to do business in the increasingly global forest b y R Y A N S T U A R T / / p o r t r a i t b y A D A M B L A S B E R G AS THE PROVINCE'S FOREST INDUSTRY STRUGGLES TO GET BACK ON ITS FEET, COULD SMALL, INDEPENDENT PRODUCERS BE THE FUTURE? IN TERRACE, PORT ALBERNI AND CASTLEGAR, THREE COMPANIES SHOW A WAY FORWARD

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