Northern Pulp's decision to sell off assets a blow to N.S. forestry sector
Pictou Landing First Nation chief says the legacy of the mill is one of trauma
For Todd Burgess and the rest of Nova Scotia's forestry sector, word that Northern Pulp is abandoning the idea of a new multi-billion-dollar operation near Liverpool was not the news they were hoping for.
"It's devastating, really, for forestry in Nova Scotia," said Burgess, executive director of Forest Nova Scotia.
"It's going to make it more difficult for woodlot owners to manage their woodlot properly, it's going to be difficult for forestry contractors to succeed and be profitable."
Officials with Northern Pulp announced Monday night that a review of the proposed new bleached softwood kraft pulp mill and bioproducts hub would not generate the required 14 per cent rate of return to be deemed viable.
Still looking for a mill
Instead, the company is moving ahead with plans to auction off its Nova Scotia-based assets as part of a creditor protection process that's been ongoing for more than five years.
Natural Resources Minister Tory Rushton said he was disappointed but not surprised by the outcome.
Rushton said the provincial government continues to be ready and willing to help bring a new pulp mill to the province, but he said such a venture would also require the participation of the federal government, and any proponent would have to "put skin in the game as well."
"We're still having conversations, we're still interested and we will do everything we can to investigate a market for low-grade wood fibre," he said in an interview.
Freeman Lumber in Greenfield was one of the operations that stood to gain the most from a new mill being situated a short drive away at the site of the former Bowater Mersey operation.
Markets needed for low-grade products
Marcus Zwicker, the company's chief operating officer, said the sector has struggled to find a market for low-grade byproducts from lumber production and harvests since Northern Pulp shut down in 2020.
Along with the economic development that would have come from the construction of a new mill, he said the operation would have "substantially" increased the value of residual products that right now are mostly being used to produce heat and electricity.
"And the value there just isn't the same as marketing a product that consumers can buy or use, whether that's tissue, cardboard, coffee filters, you name it — whatever comes from a pulp product," he said in an interview.
"All of those things have a significantly higher value."
Zwicker said he believes a pulp mill smaller than what Northern Pulp was proposing — and with a lower required rate of return — would be more likely to be viable for the province.
Future of timberland
He and Burgess both said they also have concerns about the loss of the greenhouses Northern Pulp used to maintain, which would produce millions of seedlings a year for reforestation efforts. Rushton said officials in his department are looking at potential options to fill the gap.
The minister is also watching to see what happens with the process to sell off the nearly 200,000 hectares of timberland Northern Pulp managed.
It's too soon to say if the province would get in on the bidding, but Rushton said he has a keen interest in seeing that the land remains for industrial use to the benefit of the forestry sector in Nova Scotia.
Burgess said he's hoping that as the search continues to get a new mill in the province, attention also turns to other potential uses for waste products, such as expanded district heat projects.
Trauma not easily forgotten
Although Northern Pulp has not operated a mill in the province since failing to get environmental approval from the provincial government for a new effluent treatment facility, Pictou Landing First Nation Chief Tamara Young was thinking Tuesday about the site's legacy and what it leaves behind for the future.
The mill used Boat Harbour, a former tidal estuary beside the First Nation, to treat its effluent. Former premier Stephen McNeil called it one of the worst examples of environmental racism in the province's history. Even after the taps were turned off in 2020, the community is still dealing with the fallout, and cleanup of the site remains years away.
"For decades, our Nation bore the direct impacts of Northern Pulp's operations," Young said in an emailed statement.
"While the mill closed in 2020, the trauma and environmental degradation it left behind are not easily forgotten — or forgiven."
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