Aerial view of the city of Powell River
Business

 tiskʷat Mill closure in Powell River

After a century of operation, British Columbia’s oldest newsprint mill is closing down. Catalyst’s tiskʷat Mill, in Powell River, has been in operation since 1912. There was a time when one in every 25 newspapers worldwide used their paper. The mill closed down, for what was initially thought to be a temporary curtailment, on November 22nd. On December 1st their parent company, Paper Excellence, announced the closure was indefinite. 

Photo of Powell River Mill courtesy Paper Excellence

Graham Kissak, Vice President of Corporate Communications emailed  Cortes Currents that tiskʷat  is no longer able to compete in a market plagued by an ongoing contraction of global paper markets and paper prices.

The company plans to offer employees jobs at Paper Excellence’s other facilities: Catalyst Port Alberni, Catalyst Crofton, Howe Sound Pulp and Paper, and Skookumchuck Pulp.

UNIFOR Local 75 president Bill Spence told the Powell River Peak, “They have to feed their families, so if there is an opportunity elsewhere, then that’s good for the members.”

Clean-up of the facility, along with a removal of all fibre and chemicals, will continue until the last employees are laid off on January 31, 2022.

Powell River Mayor David Formosa issued a press releasae saying, “Paper Excellence, the BC Government, and Renewable Hydrogen Canada have been in extensive discussions to transition the mill into a significant hydrogen and clean fuel production facility.”

While there are no guarantees this will come to fruition, the city promised to continue working with Premier Horgan’s office, MLA Nicholas Simons, and Paper Excellence to explore opportunities.

Katrine Conroy, BC’s Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, promised “Our government is committed to supporting impacted workers through skills training, short-term employment opportunities, and employment assistance and support.”

The mill has been struggling for the last decade, as the world around it increasingly turned to paperless communications. 

Mayor Formosa said that city has done everything within its power to keep the mill viable throughout this time, providing property tax relief, working with the company to secure funding to improve operations, and even finding new owners that would take the operation in different directions.

Paper Excellence Canada acquired the Catalyst Paper Corporation, and its mills in Powell River, Crofton and Port Alberni, on March 15, 2019.

Powell River’s Community Profile describes the mill as the city’s #1 employer. Prior to February 19, 2020, 420 people were employed there.

That was when  Kissack told BIV, “We were attacked with malware, which impacted many, many servers and our ability to be able to manufacture products because we couldn’t see our customer orders and things like that. Unfortunately, it coincided almost identically with when we were being hit by the global effects of COVID.”

Only 206 of the workers were employed when the mill reopened in May, 2020. 

Though it was still a major employer, the Powell River Association for Community Living had as many employees and there were even more working for School District #47.   

in August 2020, the Western Investor stated “once a thriving mill town, Powell River is now best known as a tourism and retirement destination. Twenty-seven per cent of residences are over the age of 65, compared to a provincial average of 18 per cent.”

This does not diminish the effect tiskʷat’s closure has on the more than 200 families working there, or the hole it leaves in the larger community.

Top photo credit: Aerial view of Powell River and the mill – Photo by Sancho McCann via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)

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