Fibre mill proposed for North Shore area.

Graeme Lowry has been waiting eight years for the green light from the province to build a $100-million wood-fibre mill along Lake Huron's North Shore. So it isn't any great strain on his patience if Lowry, the president of Algoma Mills Works, has to wait another month or two.

His firm is one of 11 forest products companies including a First Nations community waiting for the Ministry of Natural Resources to grant them access to thousands of hectares of Crown land deemed underutilized.

Together with his business partner and corporate development director, Phil Stanghetta, the pair have been planning to construct a state-of-the-art mill project employing 300 people using the latest state-of-the-art European and North American technology.

The province is making about one million cubic metres of surplus non-veneer grade white birch and low-grade hardwood available to forest companies on Crown land. The wood supply is spread across 28 forest-management units from Wawa to Ottawa Valley.

Last spring the province invited forest companies to submit proposals for wood fibre mills on these lands to encourage investment and create jobs, especially among First Nations people. A ministry hardwood project team reviewed the submissions and has passed on their recommendations to an inter ministerial steering committee to review their report before the document reaches the minister's desk.

An announcement is expected within the next month or two, says MNR spokesperson Brady Irwin:

According to Lowry's corporate profile, the mill would employ 200 full-timers, plus a further 100 for harvesting and transport operations. The annual payroll is tabbed at $13 million.

The facility would manufacture specialty Finnish-style birch plywood using small and short logs, in what Lowry describes as the high quality end of the birch hardwood plywood spectrum. A lack of veneerable type logs has led to the development of technology and value-added products using smaller logs to produce high quality forest products such as birch-ply. That material can be used in furniture, cabinets, curved plywood applications and specialty products that Algoma Mills Works intends to ship to the U.S. Midwestern market.

A mill site hasn't been selected until the wood supply is made available, Lowry says, but it will be close to major transportation links and must be in the region defined by the Elliot Lake and North Shore Corporation for Business Development. (ELNOS) which signed on as an equity partner. Additional financial support has come from the Mississauga First Nations.

For Blind River Mayor Bob Gallagher, a ministry announcement can't come soon enough for the regional town of 3,100 which experienced the loss of several well-paying jobs in the 1990s.

Gallagher and Lowry have met with the Natural Resources minister several times in the last few years to gain access to these Crown lands and is pleased the ministry finally reassessed their policies and agreed to make the wood available through a competitive process.