More layoffs are coming at Brink Forest Products.
Today (Friday), the company announced its River Road operation in Prince George will see its workforce slashed from 85 employees to 32 while its Houston operations is cut down to a single employee, from 12.
While the tariffs south of the border is the main culprit along with limited fibre, owner John Brink voiced his displeasure with the lack of support from all levels of government.
“We haven’t seen much help from the province, we haven’t seen much help from the federal government and we’d like to see and I have been vocal about it, is more involvement of the region. Even the City of Prince George.”
Last winter, the federal government updated its $1.2 billion softwood lumber guarantee program to provide Canadian companies up to $25 million in loan guarantees from the Business Development Corporation (BDC) of Canada to help them weather the storm of American duties and tariffs crippling an already fragile the industry.
Brink applied for the program a year ago to keep his trio of mills open but still hasn’t received a response or any funding, designed to assist lumber/timber companies cover operational costs and maintain cash flow.
“We have been trying to get access to it for the last year and so far, we have not had the support from our main banker, which is critical in that process for accessing those loans.”
“For any company, it is impossible to operate and even under those circumstances we were trying to hang in there.”
Brink added the job cuts come after its workforce was roughly 400 employees just a year earlier.
“It’s extremely unfortunate and very, very difficult for me and for our senior management. It’s never easy obviously but the reality is everyone is in the same boat but we pay almost 50 percent of our revenues towards duties and tariffs.”
Earlier this year, Brink announced the indefinite shut down of its specialty wood products mill in Vanderhoof.
In March their workforce went from 85 employees down to 45 then getting reduced to almost zero by May.
-story by Brendan Pawliw-MyPGNow
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