By Kellah Lavoie

Good news for the Big River sawmill

Apr 18, 2011 | 6:29 AM

A big step was made towards reopening the shuttered Big River sawmill.

Carrier Forestry Products met with members of the community, Friday morning, said Brian Brownfield, mayor of Big River and chairman of the Big River and Area Forestry Committee.

The group is putting in an offer to buy the mill that has been closed since 2006.

“They informed us they had put an offer into EACOM to purchase the mill and they would be in negotiations with them,” he said.

If negotiations fail, Carrier Forest Products plans to build a brand new greenfield mill in Big River, Brownfield said.

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One of the issues EACOM had after buying the mill from Domtar was timber rights, but Brownfield said Carrier is on the right track since they already have some timber rights.

“Big River has 200,000 that we could turn over to them and there’s other players, that, to my understanding, that they have already been in negotiations with,” he said.

That means Carrier should have enough timber to reopen the mill.

Even if negotiations fall through, the lumber company will look to use a new site that they will service and get up and running.

“Now we are just going to wait,” he said.

Carrier is going before the EACOM board with their proposal on Tuesday.

“They may accept it or negotiations may go back and forth, so it will probably take a while before that settles,” Brownfield said.

“We would all prefer that that mill start running again, it would be sad to see … something done with it other than (get) it starting up and running.”

For now, he said as mayor, he is ecstatic and it is one of many pluses for the town.

“With all the other stuff going on, the grant, the tourist industry, now to know that there is going to be something open there again. It is unbelievably good for this community.”

He said much of the accolades go to everybody who worked to get them to this point.

klavoie@panow.com