B.C. cut its stumpage revenue forecast 11% to C$13.55/m³ (from C$15.24 in the February budget), trimming forest revenue by $49M to $472M for the year; Finance Minister Josie Osborne blamed higher operating costs, continued softwood lumber duties and a 10% tariff, and the 2028/29 rate was also lowered to $14.79 (from $16.44), with Ottawa and B.C. committed to softwood measures by Dec. 1 (Wood Central)
Stora Enso confirmed the permanent closure of its ~200,000 m³/yr Veitsiluoto sawmill in Kemi, Finland, one of the country's older sawmills, shifting pine production to newer, larger units in its Oulu, Kalajoki and Oulainen network (Global Wood Markets Info)
LP Building Solutions (Louisiana-Pacific) will indefinitely curtail OSB production at its Jasper, Texas mill from October, affecting ~150 jobs, citing soft demand — one of several North American OSB curtailments as US housing starts weaken (Wood Central, LP)
J.D. Irving's Irving Forest Products will roughly double its Ashland-area sawmill (Nashville Plantation, Maine) from 130M to 250M board feet/yr, backed by $112.9M in combined federal and state New Markets Tax Credit allocations (~$44M in tax credits), creating and retaining the equivalent of ~220 permanent full-time jobs in Aroostook County (GlobeNewswire)
Finland's forest management associations (via MHYP and MTK) launched Pino, a digital marketplace for power-of-attorney timber sales, but Metsä Group and Stora Enso declined to participate over data-security concerns that associations — which also sell harvesting services — could access competitively sensitive bid data; the split risks fragmenting the 15–20M m³/yr of mandate-based timber trade across competing channels (PULPAPERnews)
Russia is weighing wider log-export quotas — widening an existing trade rather than restarting log exports from zero — and Russian sawmills warn that Chinese mills could turn cheaper Russian sawlogs into lumber that displaces Russian softwood in international markets (Global Wood Markets Info)
Paper & Pulp Mills
The American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) is urging lawmakers to exclude commercial paper and packaging from Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) programs, arguing paper-based packaging already recycles at high rates through existing privately funded systems and that inclusion would force producers to pay into and subsidize residential recycling they do not use, raising costs without improving outcomes (PULPAPERnews)
