Tembec is suspending operations at its three sawmills in Quebec due to the high cost of wood supply in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region. The company says the wood costs make its sawmills uncompetitive given the persistent weak market prices for lumber in North America. The move affects 360 direct jobs at Tembec. “Tembec has already expressed…

For a company that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Canadian pulp mills to become the second-largest pulp and paper producer in Canada, Paper Excellence (PE) doesn’t talk about itself much.  The company’s owner, 35-year-old Jackson Widjaja, who lives in Vancouver, doesn’t give interviews, and up until May 1, the company’s deputy CEO,…

Interfor Corp. (TSX:IFP) is buying a sawmill in Monticello, Ark., for just under US$29.3 million plus the cost of log and lumber inventories and certain pre-closing capital expenditures. The mill, about 145 kilometres southeast of Little Rock, produced about 75 million board feet of lumber in the past year, Interfor said in a statement announcing…

Members of the United Steelworkers Union are petitioning the B.C. government to hold a public inquiry into the explosions at Babine and Lakeland sawmills. Adam Connell is hoping to raise at least 10,000 signatures. At the time of writing the petition has just over 2,200 signatures. The explosions happened back in 2012. Four people were…

There’s some good news for the town of Chetwynd on the jobs front, with the pending May 1 reopening of a pulp mill that was shut down in 2012. Paper Excellence, owned by the Dutch subsidiary of an Indonesian conglomerate –  Sinar Mas Group – has been quietly reactivating the former Tembec pulp mill, which…

Paper Excellence reportedly has plans to restart operations at its Chetwynd mechanical pulp mill in British Columbia, Canada as early as July. The mill, which Paper Excellence bought from Tembec in March of 2014, has been idle since September 2012. At the time the mill was shut down, Tembec noted that a soft market for…

A Halifax-area lumber producer hopes to have its sawmill running again within six weeks after a recent flash freeze led to the collapse of one of its main buildings. Hefler Lumber co-owner Floyd Gaetz says the failure happened about three weeks ago, and initially threw 14 people employed in the Middle Sackville mill and sorting line out of…

Federal trade officials have launched an investigation of Canadian government subsidies to the Port Hawkesbury Paper mill, which two paper companies with mills in Maine argue unfairly undercut and damaged their business. The U.S. Department of Commerce has recommended opening an investigation of 28 instances of government help to the Canadian mill in response to…

A union representing more than 9,000 forestry workers is withdrawing from a coroner’s inquest into the deaths of four sawmill employees because it says it lost confidence in the process to determine what went wrong before and after the blasts. A coroner’s inquest in Prince George, B.C., was set to provide a final analysis into…

The largest sawmill in the province says it has only enough hardwood supply to keep working for another week. Forty-five people work at the mill in Westville, Pictou County, owned by Groupe Savoie based in northern New Brunswick. Mill manager Andrew Watters says the same supply constraints that forced two flooring companies to close recently…