Paper & Pulp Mills
Toulouse court rejects Pigasse bid for Fibre Excellence; Tarascon mill headed to liquidation The Toulouse Commercial Court on July 27 rejected French banker Matthieu Pigasse's conditional takeover proposal for insolvent pulp producer Fibre Excellence, whose Tarascon and Saint-Gaudens mills in southern France have a combined capacity of 550,000 tonnes per year. Tarascon was ordered into liquidation, while Saint-Gaudens — occupied by employees since July 21 — won a conditional reprieve: an unnamed industrialist has submitted a letter of intent, and the court set a 48-hour deadline for a EUR 2 million escrow payment to keep a takeover process alive through the end of August. Source: PaperAge
Clearwater Paper swings to Q2 loss as paperboard prices sag Clearwater Paper reported a second-quarter net loss of $21 million (adjusted EBITDA of negative $8 million) on net sales of $375 million, as a 9% year-over-year drop in paperboard pricing to $1,077 per ton offset an 8% rise in sales volumes; the quarter also absorbed a $22 million planned maintenance outage at Lewiston, Idaho. The company restructured its Cypress Bend facility with a 20% workforce reduction targeting $8-12 million in annual savings, and CEO Arsen Kitch pointed to "early signs of improvement" in SBS industry conditions. Source: PaperAge
Wood Pellets
FutureMetrics: torrefied pellets show promise as sustainable aviation fuel feedstock A new FutureMetrics white paper examines how torrefied wood pellets could serve as feedstock in Fischer-Tropsch gasification systems to produce sustainable aviation fuel, positioning the black-pellet sector for a potential new demand channel beyond power generation. Source: Biomass Magazine