The New Brunswick government announced a plan Wednesday to help workers and communities affected by a growing number of sawmill closures.

Natural Resources Minister Donald Arsenault said if a sawmill owner sells the mill equipment and assets to another operator in the province, the Crown allocation of wood attached to that mill will be transferred as well.

The seller will have to contribute $10 for each cubic metre of its Crown allocation to a fund that will be used to support other economic development in the affected communities.

"It's a fund put in place to help those communities absorb the shock of losing that sawmill," Arsenault told a news conference in Fredericton.

"There was no policy in place, so if a mill shut down, that community was left without an operation or economic activity. What we're trying to do is [spur] other economic activity by creating this fund."

Mill closures have affected more than a thousand workers in New Brunswick this year.

Arsenault said sawmills are having a difficult time surviving while prices are low and the Canadian dollar is high.

He said government must help the communities left behind, and the fund being created will help to diversify the economy of those communities.