A lot won’t understand the full impact, but this is a major blow for all our loggers. 10,000 tons a day of pulp wood. Roughly 300 loads a day. If anyone has any pulp wood they want logged I’d suggest doing it before the end of July. No question prices will be plummeting. Going to be an interesting rest of the year for local loggers. Only light I see for a lot is a new mill in Fair Fax that has been supposed to open for the last year.
The impact of this in my World is staggering. The News is reporting on the 500 loosing their job with WestRock. So many more from the trucks hauling chips from Holly hill, Summerville mill, Dempsey Mill, and many smaller lumber yards the are sending fuel chips and saw dust for the Charleston Mills boiler. Most all other mills are running on quotas now, so no room for additional wood to take up the slack. So many factors… I’ll predict we’ll loose 20 ish loggers and then they are going to catch heck selling equipment no longer needed. Time will tell. Don’t want to get into too large of a knee jerk response.
Everyone is tight lipped about future prospects of property after closure. Not sure now but a decade ago Carnival was doing all it could to purchase the property because of so much flack and parking issues where they are now. Then again on the Carnival thing, I heard they were moving out in 2024 because the Port will not renew their contract.
Might be neat if Carnival gets it. Nice to have a cruise ship so close to home.
All I know or heard was that they no longer want to do unbleached paper, which is odd, as they are upgrading some things at the Florence mill. But no matter they can not upgrade enough to take the 550,000 tons of pulp wood Charleston takes in every year. The rumor mill is wide open and I’ve heard all kinds of things, but bottom line, it’s gonna be a rough late summer and fall for all of our local loggers.
Maybe they’ll put a big boat landing there with plenty of docks! Keep them look at me boats near the ocean and away from us regular Joe’s at bushy park trying to catch a fish.
Pffft, if they put a boat landing there, everyone will be complaining about tug boat traffic/wakes. Who is going to pay for a boat landing?
What make the most sense is have SPA extend N Chas terminal onto that tract.
I know that paper mill has been an environmental disaster waiting to happen. What that place used to discharge in the river was mind boggling, I remember looking at a sat photo long before there was Google Earth , and there were massive black pools of some liquid that stained the river so badly, looked like black ink was dumped. All the bark and sludge from the vats? They used to dump it in the river, EPA eventually shut that down.
They had the black liquor accident in there back in '93, scary thinking that crap is stored next to the river. What else toxic is in those big tanks?
One thing for certain, plenty of jobs out there to be filled, and the stale fart smell will finally be gone, when the wind shifts to the West.
We still have many older homes on the edges of marshes and rivers that were grandfathered in on their septic system. Scat goes right in the rivers and estuaries, not to mention all the grey water with gosh knows what chemicals mixed in.
The quota issue has been ridiculous as of late. I can only imagine what it’s going to be when local loggers loose 300 loads of pulpwood a week. Nothing in logging can be done without having to get rid of pulpwood. We do a lot of export logs, but that is a very volatile market fluctuating from bring what you can to “nope, don’t want any more”. No Knee jerk, this is really going to be a time of survival of the strongest in logging community in the lowcountry and mid state.
We’ve moved more this last month due to rain and quotas for differing product than I can ever remember. And moving aint cheap!
