Category Archives: International Forestry News

There has been a lot of analysis in the last few days concerning the impact the massive earthquake, and tsunami in Japan will have on North American timber markets.

On Friday, shares of North American timber companies jumped with the thought that an increase in lumber demand will occur to rebuild Japan’s damage.

Weyerhaeuser is one of North America’s largest exporters of logs to Japan. Shares of Weyerhaeuser climbed as much as 6% during trading on Friday. Last year, more than $1 billion of Weyerhaeuser’s revenue came from sales to Japan.

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A massive forest fire inferno started yesterday in northern Israel.

41 people have already been killed and more than 15,000 have left the area. Most of the dead are prison guards who were on their way to move inmates from a prison in the forest when their bus caught on fire and overturned.

Israel does not have fire fighting airplanes and have turned to their neighbours in Greece, Cyprus, Britain, Turkey, Bulgaria, Russia, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Spain, Croatia, France and Jordan for help. Firefighters and equipment in the U.S. and Australia are on stand-by.

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Domtar is converting is Plymouth, North Carolina mill to produce fluff pulp.

Fluff pulp is bleached softwood cellulose fiber used worldwide in absorbent applications such as baby diapers, feminine hygiene and adult incontinence products.

Once running at full capacity, the Plymouth mill will exclusively produce fluff pulp and operate two fiber lines and one fluff pulp machine. The mill will have an annual production capacity of approximately 444,000 metric tons.

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Tolko Industries has signed two major new deals during the joint trade mission to China this week. These new contracts will see more than 364 million board feet of lumber heading to China from British Columbia.

The first contract will see Tolko’s Soda Creek Division in Williams Lake, B.C. using primarily beetle wood to produce studs for China.

“This is significant as China has not traditionally been interested in stud lumber” says Pat Bell, Minister of Forests, Mines and Lands. “This will secure the jobs at the Tolko Soda Creek division.”

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The Chief Executives of West Fraser Timber Co., Canfor Corp, Tolko Industries, International Forest Products, Conifex Timber left for a trade mission China on Thursday, along with other top industry and union officials.

The Chinese market has been a steady customer for our western lumber producers this year. British Columbia has estimated its producers had sold $342 million (Cdn.) in lumber to China in the first eight months of this year, up 71% from a year ago.

Ever since Russia decided to raise duties on their logs exported to Chinese sawmills, China’s growing demand for lumber has meant
an increase in orders for Canadian producers. It is possible that Canada will overtake Russia as the largest lumber exporter to China this year.

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The United States International Trade Commission concluded today that their domestic industry is harmed by imports of coated free paper. As a result, antidumping and countervailing duties will be imposed on imports of certain coated paper products from China and Indonesia.

Reaction was swift from both sides of the issue.

Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) is disappointed by the decision. Asia Pulp & Paper is the leading exporter of coated paper from China and Indonesia.

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Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), the leading exporter of coated paper from China and Indonesia, received today the lowest combined antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) margin among Chinese exporters, but is still disappointed with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s final AD/CVD margin. According to APP, the Commerce Department adopted questionable calculation methodologies in rendering its final determination; whereas more proper methodologies would have yielded little to no AD/CVD duties.

“While we are disappointed in today’s announcement of the final AD and CVD rates, we remain confident that the entire trade case will be thrown out at the conclusion of the International Trade Commission’s injury investigation in mid-October,” said Terry Hunley, Acting President, APP Americas.

“This is the second such investigation conducted in the last two years, both of which have involved exports of coated paper produced by APP,” Hunley noted. “The prior investigation was terminated by the U.S. government because APP’s imports of coated paper did not injure the U.S. industry. We believe we will secure a similar result in this case. In fact, this investigation has even less basis than the last one, since the U.S. industry itself has benefited from large, direct federal subsidies for its production of the pulp used to make paper.”

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Appleton Coated LLC, NewPage Corporation, and Sappi Fine Paper North America – together with the United Steelworkers (USW) welcomed the Department of Commerce’s announcement of final antidumping and countervailing duty margins on coated paper imports from China and Indonesia.

Today’s announcement of final antidumping and countervailing duty margins sets out the tariffs that will be applied to unfairly traded imports of coated paper from China and Indonesia that benefited from subsidies or were dumped in the U.S. market. The Department of Commerce’s action updates the preliminary margins that were announced earlier in the consideration of the case which was filed jointly by the USW and the three companies.

The companies and the USW filed unfair trade cases on September 23, 2009 with the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging that certain coated paper from China and Indonesia had been dumped and subsidized resulting in injury to the domestic industry and its employees. The paper products covered by the petitions include coated paper in sheet form used in high-quality writing, printing and other graphic applications, with a GE brightness rating of 80 or higher and weighing up to 340 grams per square meter.

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Russia is currently experiencing large devastating forest fires.

Now there is talk that Russia’s fire situation has been made way worse due to a new law passed 4 years ago by Vladimir Putin and powerful logging interests that disbanded a centralized system of forest protection and turned the country’s vast forests into a virtual no-man’s land.

Forest protection is now been left to regional authorities.

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Tembec‘s European subsidiary, Tembec SAS, is in advanced negotiations with Paper Excellence B.V. for the sale of two Kraft pulp mills located in Tarascon and Saint-Gaudens, France.

As currently proposed, Paper Excellence B.V. would acquire 100% of the shares of Tembec Saint-Gaudens SAS and Tembec Tarascon SAS, two subsidiaries of Tembec SAS. The total consideration for the proposed transaction would be approximately 100 million Euros (C $137 million) allocated as between shares and assumption of debt, subject to closing working capital adjustments.

Due to the advanced nature of the negotiations, Tembec SAS has initiated the process of consultation with mill employee committees, as required under French Law. Tembec SAS expects to finalize the transaction shortly after the consultation process is complete.

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