Private woodlot owners say Port Hawkesbury Paper’s prices are too low to survive:
The private woodlot owners supplying the Port Hawkesbury Paper mill in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia are saying the prices the mill is paying for wood is too low for their businesses to survive.
Bill McCarthy, President of North Inverness Forest Management Limited, feels like the victim of school yard bullying after seeing the mill’s buying policy.
When wood buyers from the mill met with the organization’s manager, Clifton Sangster, last week, they discovered Port Hawkesbury Paper is offering just $43/tonne delivered roadside for 8 foot wood and $40/tonne for random length wood. McCarthy said that “when NewPage shut down the mill in August 2011, they were paying us $50 to $55 per tonne roadside for our wood.”