THE Upper Murray fires have prompted the shelving of a planned $3 million upgrade for Corryong's sawmill.
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The blazes have also destroyed the home of Walkers Sawmill employee Peter Koopmans and his girlfriend Jemasyn Bertelli.
Sawmill managing director Graham Walker has donated a $1000 towards a GoFundMe online appeal by the couple.
He has also guaranteed to keep paying the wages of his staff and not stand them down, despite production uncertainty.
While the mill site has remained safe from bushfires, the disaster has affected its pallet-making operations.
With electricity cut to Corryong, the mill has only been able to continue on a limited basis with some power through generators set up to support the town.
Mr Walker said some timber that had begun to dry and buckle had been processed into pallets, but only five of his 20 staff were working.
He said there was hope power supplier Ausnet may provide a generator for the mill's sole use.
However, there is not likely to be any new logs trucked to Corryong soon with VicForests' chief executive telling Mr Walker there had been huge losses.
"They're saying it will be well into February or even later," Mr Walker said.
"All of their coupes will be in disarray and there's 600,000 hectares of their bush burnt, so it's going to affect not only this year's logging, but logging long term.
"Regardless of what (Victorian Premier) Daniel Andrews' government was going to do there is going to be a huge effect on logging."
He said while he had continued to entertain a $3 million upgrade to the factory following that plan, the fires had now prompted him to put that work on hold.
Mr Walker said the impact of the blazes had made the revamp unviable for the foreseeable time.
Production has also been hit by power-related damage to computers used to automate the painting of blue and logos onto pallets.
That work is having to be done through hand stencilling, with the parts needed to restore the mechanical routine expected to take two to three weeks to arrive from the United States.
The mill was offline for maintenance work between Christmas and the new year.
