Rentech’s Atikokan facility in Ontario, Canada, achieved record production of approximately 1,850 metric tons of wood pellets for the week ended November 14. The plant’s design capacity is 110,000 metric tons per year, or 2,115 metric tons per week, as the company said in the press release received by Lesprom Network. The Wawa facility resumed…

The Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) is applauding an issues paper released by the Canadian Climate Forum that documents how forests and products made from tree fibre will play an increasingly critical role in the transition to a low carbon economy. The study “Contributing to Climate Change Solutions” authored by scientist Dr.Stephen Colombo was…

For anyone thinking that the Obama administration’s decision on the Keystone pipeline represents a clearing of the Canada-U.S. decks — guess again. Another major trade dispute is lurking just around the corner, and it’s on an all-too familiar topic: softwood lumber. Against the backdrop of a U.S. presidential election, the Softwood Lumber Agreement — which…

When the Prime Minister’s Office released the ministerial mandate letters for the new cabinet last Friday, the thing that stood out to political observers, beyond the unprecedented nature of their publication at the federal level, was the specificity of the marching orders. Which is why the omission, from Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland’s mandate, of the…

A photographer from Wenatchee, Washington, has made a revealing discovery at the scene of a remote and long-abandoned fire lookout: a pile of very old firewood. John Marshall has a contract to make cross-time comparisons by re-photographing landscape panoramas from Western fire lookouts. In the 1930s, Forest Service crews snapped theoriginal panoramic photos. That’s what brought…

Seven more biomass installations are in line for government facilities early next year, says Energy Minister Paula Biggar. Already in place at 13 government properties, Biggar says the heating method reduces greenhouse gas and supports local industry. “Biomass heat is a local, renewable, carbon neutral resource, and government is leading the way for biomass heat,”…

Teachers at Stanley Humphrey Secondary School (SHSS) have launched a club to introduce students to jobs in forestry. Members of the Kootenay Forest Connections Club were at the Armoury in Trail on Friday, learning to rough-cut wood with the help of the 44th Field Engineer Squadron and Atco Wood Products. Trent Coombs, SHSS social studies…

Northeasterners who are digging deeper into their pockets to pay for firewood this season can add a new scapegoat to the roster of usual market forces: fracking. Yep, a timber industry representative in New Hampshire said those hydraulic fracturing well sites in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale formation to suck natural gas out of the ground are…

Justin Trudeau is barely off the campaign bus and he’s already facing his first major trade showdown with the United States. And it’s not over the Keystone XL pipeline, the Trans-Pacific Partnership or climate-change policy. The prime-minister-designate is about to get his introduction to the never-ending softwood lumber file. The most intractable trade dispute in…

Premier Christy Clark said her first conversation with Canada’s prime minister-designate Justin Trudeau was about the softwood-lumber agreement. “We want to see the agreement renewed,” she told the Merritt Herald at one of her stops in Merritt on Friday. The premier was in Merritt to open the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology trades building. “Canada gave…