16 August 2010

Lockerbie III scheduled for re-opening

Since the fire that occurred at the James Jones & Sons Ltd Lockerbie 3 sawmill on June 16th, the company has committed all available resource to re-organise operations in an effort to minimise disruption and to maintain supply to its customers.

The second saw group was the only part of the line that was affected by the fire and engineers at the manufacturers, Soderhamn Eriksson, have secured all available spare parts and are currently manufacturing any new components necessary for re-commissioning. The company expects Lockerbie 3 to be up and running again in early November, with everything possible being done to expedite the installation and re-commissioning process.

James Jones & Sons Ltd benefits from being a multi-site operation and emergency remedial actions were implemented, using other sites to minimise the impact on sales and production schedules. Lockerbie 1 is now operating on a two shift basis, and the Aboyne sawmill will operate on a double shift basis starting Monday 16th August. The Dumfries mill, which ceased production last November, has been successfully re-started and is again feeding carcassing specifications into Lockerbie for kiln drying, strength grading and final processing.

Although the levels of disruption have been significant, the company is enormously grateful for the work and support of the harvesting, production and sales teams who have been extremely creative and flexible in their efforts to minimise disruption and to maintain service levels.

Senior Manager-Sales, Graham Blyth says: "We have and continue to work hard to maintain output and ensure any disruption to service is kept to an absolute minimum. We are very grateful indeed to our staff and customers for their support and understanding during what has been an extremely challenging time and look forward to getting Lockerbie fully operational again".