e Plant chairman Don Koponyas holds up a sheet of laminated pine after it comes off a radio frequency press.

Okanagan Valley value-added plant
recovers from long term problems

t's been a long-time I.W.A. oper-
ation that’s had it’s fair share of
ups and down. At one time a big
sawmill and planer complex in
Penticton B.C., today’s Greenwood
Forest Products (1983) Ltd. value-
added plant is a survivor from yes-

eigsisee
ized by Local 1-423 in 1965,

the company’s predecessor, Yellow
Lake Sawmills was the parent
owner of two divisions prior to 1983.
They were the Greenwood Forest
Products sawmill and the Yellow

Lake planer mill, both operated on,

the present site under separate
seniority lists.

When the parent company went
into receivership in 1983, a new
company was hatched.

Only the planer mill, renamed

Greenwood Forest Products (1983)
Ltd. would remain.

From 1983 on the company strug-
gled through the highs and lows of
the building industry while the
union fought to bring wages and
benefits back up to industry stan-
dards. In 1989 it demanded wage
rollbacks for new employees and in
1991 it locked out workers in an
effort to take away the industry pen-
sion plan. After a bitter dispute
another plan, not portable in the
industry, was put in its place.

After negotiating a collective
agreement in 1997, the I.W.A.
brought wages for new employees up
to within $1.00 per hour of regular
employees.

“Since the early 1980’s we’ve been
playing catch-up in the plant,” said

local first vice president and busi-
ness agent Ben Landis. “When the
two former companies went broke in
‘83 all that would remain was the
planer — the sawmill breakdown

LUMBERWORKER/SEPTEMBER, 1999/25

unit and the rest went down perma-
nently.”

After operating a few years with
the planer only, the company added
a moulder and Bucatioal specialty
product line.

Today the operation has three
resaw lines, a radio frequency panel
gluing line, four kilns, trim saws and
grading lines. It’s a labour intensive
value-added plant that creates
about 70 steady jobs out of about
50,000 cubic meters of equivalent
timber a year. “There is a very high
recovery in the thin panel (siding
and paneling) products that are
made in the plant,” said Landis.

“We're rebuilding the business
over time,” said Don Koponyas, who
has been the union chairman at
Green Wood for 15 years. “And we’ve
made some excellent headway by
diversifying the product lines and
finding new ways of making the
plant more efficient.”

The company buys most of its lum-
ber in cant form from producers in
Alberta and B.C. Its main diet is
cants that measure 8” x 8” down to
3” x 3.” About 90% of the lumber
that goes through it is pine, spruce
and hemlock, with the remaining
percentage being clean and knotty
cedar.

The #1 resaw line will handle
short pieces up to 8 feet in length. It
takes the cant and cuts them down
to 1 inch diameters. The pieces are
then sent to automatic stackers
where they are air-stripped and
then sent to the kilns.

The same resaw machine will take
a 4x 4 and cut them into 2 x 4’s.
After being dried, the 2 x 4’s will go
through the #2 resaw where it is cut
into 1 x 4’s. They then go to a moul-
der table where the pieces are dou-
ble-profiled with 2 tonges and 2
grooves. The planermill operator’s

Continued on page twenty-six