UPDATE: West Fraser opens Eurocan books to Chinese
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Updated: November 13, 2009 3:29 PM
WEST FRASER has agreed to open its Eurocan pulp and paper mill books to an unnamed Chinese company in the expectation that the Kitimat plant could be sold, says forests minister Pat Bell.
Speaking from Japan Nov. 13 just before returning home from an Asian trade mission, Bell said the company is the same one that has been working for some time now on buying a closed pulp mill in Mackenzie.
Bell said the company “had fairly large interests in China” but was not in a position yet to release a name.
West Fraser announced the end of October it was closing its unprofitable Eurocan mill after 40 years of operation, putting nearly 550 people out of work.
Since then the possibility of West Fraser selling the mill has surfaced and Bell, before embarking on his trade mission, had said that he would pursue a deal.
Bell did say that any potential sale of the mill might not come with West Fraser's forests licences as part of the deal.
He said there's 4.1 million cubic metres a year of fibre in the area that can be cut and that while most of it is held by companies, there's not a lot of logging going on.
“I'm not at all concerned with making sure fibre is available,” said Bell.
The minister did caution that it is still “very early days” to talk of any kind of purchase deal and that there was a lot of work to do.
