Sabotage has halted Papeteries du Léman in Publier, France — three of four legs of a high-voltage pylon feeding the mill were sawed through on Sept. 7, cutting power to the 85,000 tpy, four-machine site (baking, thin printing, flexible packaging and tissue papers; ~360 employees); grid operator RTE is targeting a temporary bypass line by Sept. 10 (EUWID)
The widow of an electrician killed in the May 26 white-liquor tank collapse at Nippon Dynawave's Longview, WA pulp mill filed a wrongful-death suit in Cowlitz County Superior Court on Sept. 9, alleging the company ignored three warnings between July 2025 and February 2026 that the ~900,000-gallon tank was "not fit for continued service"; the failure killed 11 workers and burned two others (KOMO)
Nippon Paper Industries will suspend its Hungarian subsidiary Nippon Paper Chemicals Europe (battery-grade CMC, local production started only in 2025) effective Dec. 31, 2026, consolidating output at its Gotsu mill in Japan and booking an extraordinary loss, citing EV-policy and subsidy uncertainty in Europe and North America (PaperAge)
Forestry & Timber
B.C.'s forest sector — COFI, the BC First Nations Forestry Council, the Truck Loggers Association, contractors, manufacturers and unions — told Premier Eby in a joint letter that the industry is at a "breaking point," asking for a crisis task force with authority to cut costs and regulatory hurdles and to lift the economically viable harvest to 45M m³/yr from a projected 29M m³ (Global News)
Austria's VM Holz (Vöcklamarkter Holzindustrie) plans a €70M expansion of its Vöcklamarkt softwood sawmill, part of a wider €170M industrial and logistics project dubbed RITA (Global Wood Markets Info)
Silicon Valley-backed The Lumber Manufactory (founded 2023) is betting on standardized, replicable sawmill designs: its first plant in New Albany, Mississippi (~€12.9M, 45 MMBF/yr, ~106,000 m³) targets regions where timber growth outpaces processing capacity, with a dozen-plus US mills planned by 2030 (Global Wood Markets Info)
Five European wood associations (EPF, CEI-Bois, EFIC, FEP, ICDLI) are asking the EU to exclude urea and methanol from CBAM, warning inclusion would raise resin, panel and furniture costs with no practical abatement path for manufacturers (Global Wood Markets Info)
At Internationaler Holztag 2026, Austrian sawmills reported sharp export declines through May and compressed margins on a domestic construction slump, leaning on Italy and non-residential timber construction; German sawmills, panel and furniture makers likewise still rate conditions negatively despite a mixed August pickup (GWMI – Austria, GWMI – Germany)
