Canfor's production sites in North America
In a press release, the Canadian group announced:
- the permanent shuttering of its sawmill and pellet plant in Chetwynd/CA and
- the temporary closure its sawmill in Houston/CA for a major renovation.
As for the Houston sawmill, Canfor is still evaluating the availability of log wood and plans to undertake a thorough financial analysis of the project. A final investment decision will be made by the middle of this year.
The closure of both production sites will reduce annual production capacity by 750 MBft (output of around 883,000 m³ a year, net 2-by-4).
Nevertheless, Don Kayne, President and CEO, remains committed to British Columbia, where his company is headquartered: “We have invested approximately CAD 2.1 billion (€1.4 billion) in our B.C. operations over the last ten years. The Houston investment would represent another significant commitment and be amongst the largest capital expenditures in a new wood products manufacturing facility in B.C.’s interior in two decades. The changes we are announcing will help make us smaller but stronger in B.C.”
50 million m³ of log wood instead of 90 million m³
In 2021, at the International Softwood Conference, Kayne already presented figures which document the dwindling log resources. Similar to Central Europe, British Columbia is severely affected by the effects of climate change and restrictions on harvesting imposed by the government. In the years from 1999 to 2015, for example, the pine bark beetle damaged around 730 million m³, which is 15 times the demand for log wood of the Canadian province. In 2017, 2018 and 2021, fires destroyed around 34,000 km² of forests (For comparison: Austria has 40,000 km² of forested area). In 2021, protected forests already accounted for more than 52% of British Columbia’s land area.
According to Kayne, the interplay of all of these factors resulted in the sharp decrease of available log wood, from its peak of 90 million m³ in 1987 to less than 50 million m³ a year.
