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Lakeland’s—and the Sinclar Group’s—rich community history

The new Lakeland sawmill puts a missing piece back where it belongs.

The operation is one of the Sinclar Group’s family of eight sawmills and value added plants in British Columbia’s Central Interior. The group was incomplete during the mill’s rebuild.

Values like roots, family and community can be thrown around cavalierly these days, devaluing them in the process. But for Sinclar, they’re a proven modus operandi, part of their way of doing business. The family-owned group has more than half-a-century of involvement in and with the communities of the region, having contributed to their growth and employment bases. That involvement close coupled with a strong business case were key factors in the decision to rebuild the Lakeland mill after the shattering explosion and fire at the old mill in April 2012.

Sinclar Group Forest Products Ltd., began as a lumber wholesaler in 1962. Ivan Anderson and Bob Stewart developed one-on-one relationships with the local mill owners. They were among the approximately 20 lumber wholesalers operating in the region at the time.

Anderson and Stewart’s involvement and community contacts indicated to the pair potential business opportunities, and it led to the pair’s first mill acquisition.

Apollo Forest Products Ltd’s stud mill, which opened near Fort St. James in 1969, had recently been awarded its first lumber quota and a contract to build ties for B.C. Rail. The provincially-owned railway was building an extension to Dease Lake. The right-of-way was eventually constructed but the government ran out of money and ambition before all the steel was laid. But Apollo Forest Products adapted and flourished under Sinclar.

In 1995, Sinclar made a second commitment to Fort St. James through a joint venture partnership with the Nak’azdli First Nation. Their Tl’oh Forest Products continues to produce finger jointed stud lumber and provide an employment base for band members.

The late 1960s and early 1970s were an active time for Anderson and Stewart in the community of Vanderhoof, west of Prince George. Nechako Lumber, acquired in 1969, produces studs and one inch boards. L&M Lumber followed about four years later and became a pioneer of successfully converting small timber profiles into valuable wood products. Premium Pellet continued the Vanderhoof plants’ tradition of full wood utilization when it began operation in 2001. The plant turns sawdust and planer shavings from its sister mills into wood pellets.

Back home in Prince George, the Sinclar Group expanded its reach in the forest industry with Winton Homes & Cottages (1996)—builders of pre-manufactured homes and cottages—and AllPro Building Systems, a supplier of pre-fabricated home packages and pre-framed cabin kits.

In 1987, Sinclar acquired The Pas Lumber Company Ltd., in Prince George. Its founders, the Winton family, had been active in the regional forest industry since 1917 and in Prince George since 1954,

Doing business as Winton Global, the recession of 2008 forced Sinclar to declare an indefinite shutdown of the aging Winton dimension lumber sawmill at Bear Lake, about 70 kilometres north of Prince George, and its planer mill adjacent to the Nechako River in Prince George. Permanent closure was announced in September 2011.

As for Lakeland, its Prince George history dates back to 1963. It was owned by Anderson, Stewart and George Killy beginning in 1973 and through to 1985, when Killy sold his interest in the company. The Anderson and Stewart families continued with their investment in the company. The Lakeland mill and planer went through a major upgrade in 1980. “It may be the most modern mill in the world ... as far as technology is concerned,” Killy told the media in 1981. “It’s high investment, high recovery.”

The 1980 Lakeland mill incorporated features and techniques in log processing that were to become well established industry standards.

Lumber recovery factors were a driving principle. To attain the greatest amount of marketable product from the mill’s available raw material required extensive scanning from raw logs through breakdown and processing stages of stud lumber production. Tolerances in the mill were finer, throughput was faster and cuts could be tailored to market values.

The new Lakeland mill uses some of those same guiding principles. It has the advantage of incorporating all the sophistication and precision developed by sawmill equipment manufacturers through the intervening years. It makes it easier for Sinclar to deliver the quality products expected by its customers while maximizing the company’s returns on investment.