On April 24, 2001, West Fraser Mills Ltd., and integrated forest products company with manufacturing operations in British Columbia, Alberta, and the southern United States, and a wholly owned subsidiary of West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd., purchased Ainsworth Lumber Co. Ltd.’s stud lumber mill located at Chasm, British Columbia, including 695,000m3 of annual timber harvesting rights, for a net purchase price of approximately $22 million, plus working capital.
The mill, which currently produces approximately 170 MMfbm of stud lumber annually, is expected to be modified to produce random length lumber with an annual capacity of 200 MMfbm.
This transaction, along with the recent purchase of two sawmills in the southern United States, brings West Fraser’s annual lumber production to approximately 2.3 billion board feet, once necessary upgrades are completed at the Chasm mill.
Larry S. Hughes, David Ross, Francois Tougas and Sandra Knowler from Lang Michener’s Vancouver office represented West Fraser. Ainsworth was represented by a team comprised of Benjamin W. Goldberg, Douglas A. Side, Andrea J. Wales, and John C.Y. Fang, of Koffman Kalef, Vancouver.
