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LP Peace Valley OSB mill presses first board after restart

On June 22, 2021, LP Peace Valley officially pressed its first board since restarting earlier this year.

The news was announced on LP’s Q2 2021 earnings call held on Aug. 3. During the call, LP chair and CEO Brad Southern said, “I am happy to announce that Peace Valley pressed its first board of OSB since restarting in late June. We have received APA certification and are shipping product, including LP TechShield Radiant Barrier, a significant contributor to structural solutions growth.”

“I want to thank the team that maintained Peace Valley so diligently while it was idled and congratulate them and everyone else who contributed to the safe and efficient resumption of production at Peace Valley,” Southern continued.

Located in Fort St. John, British Columbia, LP Peace Valley is an OSB mill originally built as a joint venture with Canfor. The mill produced its first board for commercial sale on Nov. 21, 2005. Later, LP acquired a full stake in the facility, buying out Canfor, in November 2012.

In June of 2019, the facility was curtailed due to insufficient market demand.

Since then, we kept the mill ready, with the intention to reopen it when we were confident that sustainable market demand would be sufficient to absorb its capacity.

In February of this year, we reached that milestone, announcing that LP Peace Valley would restart production sometime in Q3, a date the team beat by pressing first board in June.

“When you consider the reopening of LP Peace Valley was only announced in February, to have readied the mill and be pressing our first board in just over four months’ time is a remarkable feat,” said LP Peace Valley plant manager Kelly Head.

LP Peace Valley grew its workforce from 17 to 117 people in that short time as well.

“The efforts of our care and maintenance team during the curtailment kept the mill in as good as condition as possible allowing for a quick turnaround from curtailed to pressing,” Head explained. “We had a lot of people waiting to come back, and their efforts in the four months after the reopening announcement have really been outstanding.”

LP’s goal is for Peace Valley to become a low-cost leader in the industry. Restarting the mill increases our ability to meet intense customer demand and adds to our strategic options for balancing OSB supply and demand with discipline, agility and efficiency. With its production of LP TechShield and LP LongLength OSB Sheathing, Peace Valley will also help us reach our goals for Structural Solutions as a percentage of total volume.

“We have such a strong team here in Peace Valley, it makes coming to work every day enjoyable even with the challenges of a startup,” Head said. “I am extremely proud of this team, and I’m proud to be part of the larger LP team.”