Fonds PR-2305 - British Columbia Forest Products, Plywood Operations fonds

British Columbia Forest Products Limited (BCFP) was a forestry company that operated from 1946 to 1986 in British Columbia. Formed in 1946 by E. P. Taylor and a group of personal friends, BCFP acquired the assets of numerous lumber, investment and holding companies in the Vancouver area and on Vancouver Island. Among others, these acquisitions included: Sitka Spruce Lumber Company, Vancouver; Cameron Lumber Company, Victoria; Hammond Lumber Company, Hammond; and, Industrial Timber Mills, Cowichan Lake, Vancouver Island. Over the next forty years, BCFP expanded to include timber production, pulp and paper, veneer, plywood and transportation operations. For many years, it was considered to be the second largest forest company operating in the province. The plywood operations of British Columbia Forest Products were Victoria Plywood of Victoria, BC and Delta Plywood of New Westminster, BC. Expanding on newly-acquired Vancouver Island operations, British Columbia Forest Products entered the plywood market in 1952 with the construction of a plywood plant next to its Victoria Division sawmill (formerly the Cameron sawmill). Within a year, the plant's capacity had doubled and BCFP soon became one of the province's largest plywood producers. Victoria Plywood operated in conjunction with the BCFP's Cowichan Division veneer plant and sawmill at Youbou on Cowichan Lake, Vancouver Island. The veneer plant processed peeler logs and forwarded the veneer to Victoria for manufacture into plywood. In 1982, when operations at Victoria were discontinued as a result of reduced product demand, the Youbou veneer plant closed as well. British Columbia Forest Products' largest plywood operation, Delta Plywood, was built in 1972 at the site of an idle Canadian Plywood Corporation plant on Annacis Island in New Westminster, BC. The new operation replaced BCFP's recently-acquired DougIas Plywood plant destroyed by fire in 1971. Over 19 years, Delta Plywood successfully used and further developed the original Douglas Plywood customer list. Delta Plywood was one of largest and most modern coastal plywood producers in British Columbia and one of the last veneer and plywood plant dependent on logs from coastal British Columbia. The plant ceased operations in 1991. In 1986, British Columbia Forest Products was acquired by Fletcher Challenge of New Zealand. Many of the facilities, including Delta Plywood, continued to operate under Fletcher Challenge Canada.