West Kelowna’s Gorman Group finalizes $120M deal for Princeton mill, tenure

The province gave its blessing to a West Kelowna logging company to take over rights to the equivalent of 15,000 annual truckloads of fibre.

It’s the final step in Gorman Group’s $120 million deal to take over Weyerhauser’s Princeton mill.

Minister of Forests Ravi Parmar said it was easy to approve the tenure transfer because the Gorman Group takeover bolsters the province’s economy and supports local jobs.

“We’re supporting a company based in West Kelowna that truly believes in value-added manufacturing and using every fibre to its fullest potential, and it’s keeping jobs here in the province,” Parmar said.

The forest sector has been hit hard in recent years with mill closures and job losses, largely linked to the high cost of collecting timber.

If Gorman Group didn’t buy up the Princeton mill, along with the massive timber across the Okanagan and Merritt areas, those jobs could’ve been in jeopardy due to the “uncertainty” in the industry, Parmar said.

Aside from Gorman Group’s flagship West Kelowna company, the umbrella includes Canoe Forest Products and Lumby Pole Division, along with Revelstoke companies Downie Timber and Selkirk Cedar. The tenure transfer nearly doubles its annual cut to more than 1.4 million cubic metres of timber.

“This is a good step forward for a sustainable forestry sector, not only for Princeton and the Similkameen but also for the Merritt timber supply area and the southern Interior,” Princeton Mayor Spencer Coyne said in a news release.

Parmar’s ministry consulted with the public before approving the transfer, which was a change adopted in 2019. Prior to the public interest test, he said timber companies could swap tenure “like hockey cards.”

“We recognize that any Crown tenure transfer comes with important responsibilities and obligations to First Nations, communities and employees who depend on the long-term stewardship of the land and the careful use of the fibre,” Gorman Group CEO Nick Arckle said in the release.

“We look forward to working with the First Nation bands, and the people of the Similkameen and Nicola Valleys, toward a new vision of co-operation and working together to find the balance we all seek.”