UPM surrenders its 3 Crown timber licences

With its Miramichi paper mill shuttered, UPM-Kymmene is relinquishing its three Crown land licences and will no longer manage its share of public forests after March 31.

The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, which represents laid-off mill workers in the northern city, said the Finnish forestry giant should have lost its management rights to the Crown timber licence a year ago when it closed the mill.

UPM's decision to shut its Miramichi paper mill last December tossed more than 500 people out of work. But even though the company wasn't making paper anymore in New Brunswick, it didn't lose the right to manage the wood on its share of public land.

Chris Allison, president of CEP Local 689, has been protesting UPM's continued hold on that Crown licence since the mill's closure.

"At least one could say if there's wood being shipped out of the province, there's money coming into the province," Allison said.

"Whereas when UPM, whose based out of Helsinki, is managing the forest and the wood's going out, where is the money going? It's not going into the province of New Brunswick."

UPM won't manage the forest anymore beginning March 31, but it will remain a licensee because it still owns one sawmill in Bathurst. That means it could still cut and export some wood from New Brunswick's forests.

But the forest company will only have access to enough wood allocated for that one northern sawmill and any wood that is to be shipped out of the province must be low-quality pulpwood and it has to be approved by the provincial cabinet.

A Department of Natural Resources spokesperson said the province is looking for a new manager for the licence. If the department is unable to find one by the end of March, the province will take it over.

UPM-Kymmene held three licences representing more than 9,000 square kilometres. The largest patch of public land was the Upper Miramichi licence that spans 3,840 square kilometres.

There are 26 sub-licensees and five First Nations groups that have wood allocations for timber located in the three UPM licences. The provincial government estimates that just less than 80 per cent of the wood in the three licences is being allocated to groups other than UPM.

The Miramichi mill was shutdown temporarily in August 2007 but the company announced its permanent closure in December. The company blamed the decision on the high Canadian dollar, increasing cost of raw materials and the overcapacity of magazine paper.