A steady rebound in U.S. housing activity over the next two years will spell much better times for North American lumber producers and lessen their reliance on the big Chinese market, says Montreal-based institutional investment manager Addenda Capital Inc. The lumber industry, with annual sales of $20 billion U.S., has become “surprisingly healthy” after facing…

It’s hoped that the development could someday help reduce the environmental impact from America’s growing volume of discarded electronics. The flexible and transparent circuit also can be used in wearables and “smart” textiles. Consumers in the United States threw away 2.37 million tons of electronics in 2009, the most recent year for which data are…

Ratepayers received a small windfall in April from a surge in the use of natural gas to generate electrical power in Nova Scotia. Using more natural gas, at relatively low prices, helped hold the line on fuel costs despite higher loads on the system, according to a monthly report from Nova Scotia Power Inc. The…

When Mitchell Benzmer enrolled in the forestry program at Charles Bloom secondary school, hard work wasn’t high on his list of priorities. By the time he finished the program, he had a part-time job, was helping out as a peer tutor in Grade 12 and had been named Forestry Student of the Year. “It gave…

Frustrated by what they see as skewed news coverage of biomass, a coalition of forest industry groups is attacking media outlets, charging that reporters are giving free rein to environmentalists’ critiques of wood-fired power generation while ignoring evidence that the cultivation, harvest and burning of trees and wood waste to generate electricity does not exacerbate…

Canadian softwood lumber prices have fallen substantially in the past nine months, but that long, steady decline should end soon, according to industry analyst Hakan Ekstrom. The president of Seattle-based Wood Resources International said early signs of a resurgent U.S. housing market should boost the demand for Canadian wood. “We probably reached the bottom on…

The Canada Revenue Agency has issued notice SWLN47 to provide exporters of softwood lumber products under the Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006 with information on a surge charge for the month of April 2015 for the region of Alberta. Pursuant to the surge mechanism described in subsection 14(1) of the Softwood Lumber Products…

The granddaddy of all trade disputes is getting ready to rear it’s ugly head again. The current softwood lumber agreement is set to expire in October. It has been in place since 2006 and was the result of a nasty 5 year legal battle between neighbours that killed thousands of forestry jobs across the country….

When I first became involved in forestry in the 1980s there was a debate over choosing a younger harvest age which would maximize fibre production rather than  produce larger dimension more valuable lumber from older forests. The rapid growth rates of young forests  produces more fibre per hectare which could be reconstituted (glued back together)…

At first glance, it looks like a wooden castle is going up in downtown Sudbury. Crews at the site of the new 54,000 square foot Laurentian University School of Architecture building have been pouring concrete and installing rebar in the way you might expect at a construction site. But two-story high walls made from an engineered wood product not often seen in northern Ontario have…