By Stephanie Froese

P.A. mill raises vendors’ interest

Jun 22, 2011 | 6:28 AM

A tentative timeline has been set out for the opening of the Prince Albert Pulp Mill.

Paper Excellence announced the target date for operations to begin Aug. 31, 2012, with the majority of their employee hiring to take place in late winter or early spring of 2012, said Glenn Lett, project lead.

In the meantime he said the site will remain a construction site as they perform repairs.

“The mill has sat idle for about five years. There’s been no maintenance done in that five year period and we have a lot of inspections and repairs and systems to check out,” Lett said.

The timeline came out during a packed vendor forum at the Prince Albert Inn on Tuesday.

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The meeting was to exchange information with contractors, companies, and suppliers, said Brent McIntyre, senior manager of purchasing and logistics for Paper Excellence Canada and site manager for Prince Albert Pulp Inc.

Prince Albert Pulp Inc. is just at the very initial stages and basically have to build the company from the ground up, he said.

“We’re starting from the basics of water supplies sanitation services right up to full construction, full engineering services to get the mill up and running and converted over to a dissolving grade process,” McIntyre said.

Lett said they are also engaging a lot of engineering firms to assist with the dissolving pulp process.

“It is a new process somewhat being pioneered to a large extent at this site,” Lett said.

McIntyre said the pool of companies, contractors, and resources in the Prince Albert area is great and the level of interest in the mill was certainly proven. During the meeting the crowd packed the room and overflowed into the hallway.

The 20 minute presentation was followed by more than an hour and a half of questions and conversations between vendors, supplier, and the company.

“There are some familiar faces here because we used some of them in Meadow Lake facility, but I have met some new ones. There is definitely a lot of capabilities,” McIntyre said.

Donny Jackow is the founder of the Prince Albert Company Dee-Jacks Custom Welding Inc. He said he went to the meeting to see the opportunity.

“There isn’t much work in P. A. There’s zero industry right now,” Jackow said. He said the mill opening could change that.

“It’s going to keep work here instead of us going out of town to chase jobs and stuff. I’m pretty excited.”

Local interest in a reopened Prince Albert Mill may be obvious, but the project has also generated attention in other parts of the province.

Jason Young with Standard Machine in Saskatoon came up to Prince Albert for the meeting to get some more information.

“In Saskatoon the mining industry is so big around that part, but we’re always looking at increasing business and we’ve worked with the mill before. It hurt a little bit when they went under the first time.”

McIntyre said Prince Albert Pulp Inc. is really looking forward to running as a long term viable company in the community.

sfroese@panow.com