Hurricane Florence forced lumber sawmills and paper mills in the Carolinas to close temporarily as strong winds and a deluge of rain hit the coast, said Bloomberg Friday.
Producers are racing to secure equipment and sites as Florence makes landfall, said Ewell Smith, executive director of the Carolina Loggers Association to Bloomberg. Companies from Domtar Corp. to Canfor Corp. shut facilities that may suffer damage.
“It’s a massive threat” with the industry accounting for US$29 billion in North Carolina’s economy, Smith said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg. “We don’t know what the impact will be.”
Canfor, one of Canada’s largest lumber producers, closed its Conway and Darlington mills in South Carolina and is encouraging all employees in the hurricane’s path to evacuate, spokeswoman Michelle Ward said in an email to Bloomberg.
Domtar Closures
In South Carolina, Domtar closed the Marlboro paper mill and the Tatum converting site, along with the Plymouth, North Carolina, pulp mill, and operations will resume as soon as “it is safe to do so following the storm,” spokesman Stefan Nowicki said in a statement.
The company is monitoring the weather closely for “potential impact” to other operations in South Carolina and Georgia, he said. Domtar has plans in place to minimize the potential impact to customers.
International Paper Co., the world’s largest paper producer, has facilities in the Carolinas. Spokesman Tom Ryan said the company will disclose any storm impact if it occurs.
A lot of mills “are really in the eye of the storm,” said Bernard Rose, operations manager of fiber supply at KapStone Paper & Packaging Corp., which closed one of its paper mills in Charleston, North Carolina, and a lumber mill in Summerville, South Carolina.