Tag Archives: Thunder Bay

Louis Chikoski, and his wife Jo-Anne, are $50 million richer after winning the March 23 Lotto Max jackpot.

Louis has been working at the paper mill in Thunder Bay for 40 years and was planning on retiring this fall.

“After checking my numbers on-line and saw that we matched all seven numbers, I couldn’t believe it,” said Louis. “I then called the OLG Support Centre to ask them to read me the numbers and then they told me to go to a retailer to validate. When I did that the bells and whistles went off and I almost fainted, literally.”

“When I saw the ticket receipt come out of the lottery terminal and it had the $50 million written on the top of it, I was stunned,” said Jo-Anne.

The couple does not have any immediate plans on how to spend the windfall, but will take a bit of time to absorb this news and get some advice.

“We want to catch our breath and talk to financial advisors and family about what to do with this life-changing amount of money,” said Louis.

Doug Murray, general manager Resolute Forest Products in Thunder Bay, Ontario said he is expecting to hire at least 300 skilled trades-people in the coming years.

Upcoming jobs:

• 90 jobs when the Ignace sawmill reopens in late 2013 or early 2014
• 80 jobs will be created under the $100 million capital investment the company intends to make in Northwestern Ontario between now and 2017
• More jobs at a planned sawmill expansion in Thunder Bay
• Jobs at a condensing turbine project that should be ready to start up by the fall
• 80% of its workforce is expected to retire over the next 3-4 years

Murray says the forest industry isn’t dead.

“We’ve already started hiring a number of people last year and this year.”

“We’re going to need a lot of people … It’s going to be like what was happening here in the ‘60s. When the first kraft mill came in, in 1965 and the second kraft mill came in 1975, there was a huge influx of hiring.

“That second influx of hiring in 1975, those are the people that are retiring now. So we’ll have another huge influx of people coming in to replace them. It just so happens that they’re all crunched in, because of the size of the mill now and where we’ve been over the last few years.”

~Doug Murray

Read the article from TBNewsWatch:
Jobs coming

Resolute Forest Products is temporarily closing its kraft mill in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

The mill will shut down on Friday and is scheduled to restart on January 2, 2012. Paper making operations will not be affected.

A drop in demand is cited as the reason for the downtime.

Source:
Local Kraft mill set to shut down for Christmas (TbNewsWatch)

Global Sticks, a manufacturer of value added wood products like popsicle sticks and tongue depressors, recently closed their operation in Thunder Bay, Ontario, laying off most of their employees while they attempt to obtain more cash.

Global Sticks uses birch, and some people are pointing fingers at the Ontario Government for not giving the company a wood supply. Today, Ontario’s Minister of Natural Resources, Michael Gravelle, wrote an opinion piece in The Chronicle Journal, responded to an earlier editorial.

Here is Gravelle describing the company’s wood supply issue:

“When the company first approached us with a request for a facility license it was on the basis that the 50,000 cubic metres of birch required would be accessed on a business-to-business basis.

This is not unusual and, in fact, made sense to our forestry officials as there are a large number of licence holders and private companies which could have met that demand.

Subsequently, when Global Sticks had difficulty making those arrangements, our forestry officials became directly engaged with the company, identifying over 30 potential suppliers.

It is important to note that the manufacturing process used by Global Sticks requires a very high standard of wood. The mill requires white birch veneer and only 10 per cent of any white birch stand of forested land meets this high standard. In essence, this creates a challenge for the harvester who must find a market for the remaining 90 per cent of the trees it can’t use.

In recent times, markets for the remaining 90 per cent have been limited and Global Sticks, justifiably, is not willing to purchase the 90 per cent of the trees it can’t use. But, now that the company better understands the wood supply challenges and a number of local companies have offered to work with them, these issues can be overcome.

It is also important to say that these issues would exist even if the company had a Crown-allocated wood supply. A Crown-allocated supply doesn’t create a market for the rest of the tree.”

Read the rest of Gravelle’s Global Sticks article (The Chronicle Journal)

Global Sticks, of Thunder Bay, Ontario, wants a $2 million bailout to stay afloat.

The plant uses birch to make value added wood products – like sticks for popsicles, ice cream bars, corn dogs, paint paddles and tongue depressors, but stopped operating mid-November due to a cash shortage.

The plant has only been operating since May 2011. To start the plant, Global Sticks received $7 million from the Ontario Government and its partner organizations.

Global Stick’s CEO, Reggie Nukovic, is taking full blame for the fact the plant also has no consistent wood supply. Nukovic said the company made errors when applying for wood allocation from the province, most notably not including enough Aboriginal content in the application, one of the main reasons Global Sticks was denied.

Three to four truckloads of birch are required every day to keep the plant operational. Global Sticks is willing to pay between $60 and $65 a cubic metre to secure a steady supply.

The 84 employees have finally been paid their overdue pay cheques. Most employees have been laid off. About 10 employees – 6 in the boiler room and 4 in administration – remain on the job and on the payroll.

Shareholders plan to meet with local stakeholders, including creditors who have outstanding invoices, to work through the company’s financial struggles.

Nukovic would like to have the plant back up and running before Christmas.

Source:
Seeking a bailout (TbNewsWatch)

Global Sticks seems to be having financial difficulties.

Global Sticks, of Thunder Bay, Ontario, uses birch wood to make value added products, like sticks used for ice cream bars, popsicles, corn dogs, paint paddles and tongue depressors.

Last week the company started laying off staff, and creditors voiced concern that bills were going unpaid. It has been reported that payroll was not met last week.

Because birch is seldom used as a commercial species in Northwestern Ontario, government money was funneled into Global Sticks to build a new birch based industry. The province of Ontario has given Global Sticks $7 million, but the company was not given a wood supply by the province of Ontario.

In August it was reported that Global Sticks had been getting 95% of its wood supply from Minnesota, but was establishing a new partnership with nearby Precision Wood in Murillo, Ontario for its supply. Precision Wood has been down for at least two weeks.

Media outlets in Thunder Bay are reporting that Global Sticks is desperately seeking new capital to keep the mill operating.

Sources:
Sticks on ice? (TbNewsWatch)
Global Sticks faces uncertain future (NetNewsLedger)

Previous coverage of Global Sticks

The two AbitibiBowater workers who were injured in Thunder Bay on Tuesday have been released from the hospital.

The workers were injured when a grinder hood fell from a maintenance crane at the AbitibiBowater sawmill on the Fort William First Nation.

One worker was knocked unconscious. An AbitibiBowater spokesman said one worker has received a couple of stitches and the other had some bruises.

The Ontario Ministry of Labour is investigating the accident. In the meantime, they have issued a stop work order for the sawmill.

The sawmill was already in a planned work stoppage so the stop work order is not impacting operations.

Read more:
Workers injured at mill released from hospital (TbNewsWatch)
Crane failure injures two Abitibi-Bowater workers (CBC)

Last night a structural fire broke out in AbitibiBowater‘s No. 5 paper machine in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

5 people were sent to hospital. 4 of them were suffering from smoke inhalation, and 1 suffered a blow to the head.

Thunder Bay’s Fire and Rescue helped keep on top of spot fires that were spreading in a ventilation system.

The fire was extinguished during the night. No damage estimate is known.

Source:

Through the Northern Industrial Electricity Rate (NIER) program, Abibow Canada Inc. will receive energy rebates of two cents per kilo-watt hour (kWh) to help manage electricity costs and improve energy efficiency and sustainability at their Thunder Bay mill.

Ontario has approved an initial rebate for Abibow of over $7.5 million based on the facility’s consumption for the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

“The Northern Industrial Electricity Rate Program allows us to continue to improve our energy efficiency programs as well as recognizing that most of the power produced in Northern Ontario comes from Hydro production.”

– Douglas Murray, General Manager
Thunder Bay Operations, AbitibiBowater

The three-year Northern Industrial Electricity Rate (NIER) program is averaging $150 million per year to assist Northern Ontario’s largest industrial electricity consumers.

AbitibiBowater employs more than 1,500 people in Northern Ontario.

Source: Government of Ontario

Maintenance and production workers, 150 in total, at AbitibiBowater‘s sawmill in Thunder Bay, Ontario have voted to join the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP).

CEP conducted a 6 month long organizing drive that resulted in an application for certification on August 5th at the Ontario Labour Relations Board.

Subsequent voting took place throughout the day on Friday, August 12 with CEP winning a majority support from employees.”

Stephen Boon, CEP National Representative, said, “This is one of the most modern sawmills in Eastern Canada and we are extremely pleased to welcome this skilled group of forestry workers into CEP. We will be spending the next few months helping them get established in their new CEP local and preparing to negotiate a new first agreement with AbitibiBowater.”

Boon concluded, “This should be an excellent fit as CEP is the largest forestry union in Canada and already represents most employees at AbitibiBowater’s Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper operations and almost 80% of AbibitiBowater employees in eastern Canada.”

Source: CEP