NorSask Forest Products
About the company
In 1971 the New York firm of Parsons & Whittemore (also the owners of Prince Albert Pulp at the time) built the Meadow Lake Sawmill. In 1981 the Province of Saskatchewan acquired all of the wood product mill assets of Parsons & Whittemore. In 1984, the Prince Albert pulp mill was sold to Weyerhaeuser. Ownership of the Meadow Lake sawmill was retained by the Province of Saskatchewan.
In 1987, the employees of Meadow Lake sawmill and the Meadow Lake Tribal Council formed a consortium and bought the sawmill. The consortium negotiated a Forest Management License Agreement (FMLA) with the province and commenced operation under the name NorSask Forest Products Inc.
In early 1998, the Meadow Lake Tribal Council became sole owner of NorSask becoming the largest First-Nations forest products company in Canada. Currently, the mill has doubled its 1988 production with premium lumber shipped across North America. NorSask utilizes ~ 400,000 m3 of softwood timber to produce ~ 100,000,000 fbm of lumber annually. Woodchip byproduct (~ 50,000 oven-dry-tonnes annually) is delivered to the Alberta Pacific Pulp Mill in Grasslands, Alberta.
Today, the mill's production facilities are in excellent shape, plans are being made for secondary industries and cooperative management agreements with northern communities will ensure that the mill's activities will benefit all northerners.
NorSask has also established a sawmill in the community of Dillon. The Dillon sawmill currently uses 30,000 m3 of timber. Rough-sawn lumber is transported to the NorSask sawmill in Meadow Lake for kiln-drying and planing.