The mill formerly known as Pope and Talbot has a new name and a new face – Conifex.

Conifex is a Vancouver based business. The name is derived from the words conifer and excellence.

Ken Shields, one of the sponsors of the new company, has an extensive history in the forest industry.

Born and raised in Prince George, Shields started to work in sawmills and pulp mills when he was 14. He continued to work in lumber and pulp while he completed university.

Shields was involved in the creation of Slocan Forest Products Ltd. in 1978 and served as a director of that company for 20 years. He has served as director on three other forest and related companies, and served as CEO of the acquisition vehicle established in 1997 to purchase TimberWest Forest Corp. from Fletcher Challenge Canada. He has served as a director of TimberWest ever since, He is also a lead director of Mercer International, Inc. a major publicly owned pulp producer.

Shields is also chairman of Richmond based investment firm, Raymond James.

“I have always had a great interest in the forest sector,” Shields said. “Even though I was in the financial sector for all those years, so much if it was related to the forest product industry.”

Shields said that it is important to get the sawmill and logging operations going again.

“(It is) urgent to handle some administrative items in the next few weeks because Pope and Talbot is closing its’ Portland head office by the end of the month, and from their corporate side they provided some accounting systems, payroll and e-mail,” Shields said. “Our most urgent mater is to get these new systems in place and to become a free standing entity.”

Shields said that the current management team impresses him, and that he is eager to work with them. The mill has a lot going for it too.

“We see that (the mill) has good access to reasonably priced saw logs,” he said. “It has an experienced and competent management team, and we see that it has a got a good manufacturing base that can be build up and improved.”

The acquisition of the mill by Conifex is expected to be finalized by the end of this month or early August.

“(The mill) has an experienced, competent management team, and we see that it has a good manufacturing base that can be built up and improved,” Shields said. “Roy (Helmkay, mill manager) and his team know who the buyer is (now) and that they want to resume operations. They just started that commencement of operations.”

There is a lot of work to be done before the mill starts up again, but it is planned to start up as soon as possible, beginning with the hauling of logs into the all but empty log yard.

Shields said that it is important for people to know that the $12.8 million is the cash portion of the purchase price, and in addition to that Conifex assumed some additional obligations.

“We assumed the amount of about $3 million,” he said. “The two big ones are reforestation obligations and employee holiday pay that is owed. There are some municipal taxes that are owed. We view those as obligations and we view those as being form the Conifex account and to be paid for by Conifex. If people have earned it, they will be paid and that is my position.”

The vision of Conifex is not short term. Conifex isn’t thinking short term in order to make money quickly and run. They see a lot farther then a lot of companies.

“My long run vision is that four or five years down the road this plant should be doing very well because I expect residential construction

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