World

Sometimes The Little Guy Wins

by Barbara McPherson | August 30, 2008 at 08:16 am

477 views | 9 Recommendations | 2 comments

Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, Canada

News came out to the public today that the consortium of workers, managers and investors pulled off the rescue of the biggest industry in town.

The four partner groups that make up Nanaimo Forest Products became the proud new owners of the Harmac pulp mill on Friday afternoon.

NFP, consisting of a group of Harmac's employees and managers, Pioneer Log Homes, Totzauer Holdings and the Sampson Group, successfully met the Supreme Court-ordered deadline to buy the mill for $13.2 million.

This has been an ongoing drama for the past few months with both the City of Nanaimo and a development company, Canadian Property Investments, Inc out of Calgary making competing bids for the property. Harmac Mill has been the major employer and taxpayer in Nanaimo since the early '50s and there was a very real possibility that the mill would be sold and dismantled.

The forestry industry in BC has been hard hit in the past few years with many layoffs and shutdowns. It may be that NFP will show the province the way to reverse that trend.

View Larger ImageJim Slotte, the most senior Harmac worker at 47 years, raises the flag, signifying the new ownership of the mill for Nanaimo Forest Products. Plans are for almost 200 Harmac workers to eventually return to work.Jeff Boyce/Daily News Email to a friend Printer friendlyFont:

*

*

*

*

A group of obviously overjoyed workers, along with representatives from NFP's other partners, gathered at the mill's gate before the handover was official and took part in a ceremony to raise the Harmac flag.

"We like the product so much, we bought the company," said worker Doug Narver to the amusement of his fellow workers.

0 See all footage | View Slideshow

Share: email story | add to any | | facebook | stumbleupon

recommend Sign In or Join to post comments

Uwe Paschen

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 09:16 on August 30th, 2008

Barbara McPherson, I like this story. It's good stuff.

I think this sort of model should be promoted by the Federal and Provincial Governments and May be a far better model then the Multi nationals that at just interested in shareholders profits. I have seen some of such models work in Europe and there are two working models in Ontario that I know of. The one is solely owned by the Workers.

Emilio Lizardo

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 09:20 on August 30th, 2008

Sometimes ... you're right ...

Let's see - there's these folks your article refers to and ... and ... oh, let's not forget Sampson and Goliath, which was a while ago, but still qualifies ...

That's twice in recorded human history ... heck, I'm probably missing a few, I guess ...