Unifor members ratified a new four-year Eastern Canada pulp and paper pattern agreement with Domtar (May 1, 2026–April 30, 2030): 2.5% annual raises for 10% cumulative, plus an attendance bonus of up to 1% a year and gains on vacation, leave, group insurance, pension and probation; the deal was reached with a conciliator after three rounds stalled, and Unifor says it now sets the benchmark for ~14,000 forestry members across Eastern Canada, with sawmill-sector bargaining next (PULPAPERnews, Unifor, Newswire)
Forestry & Timber
Ottawa committed a Large Enterprise Tariff Loan of up to $30M to Conifex Timber for its Mackenzie, B.C. sawmill and bioenergy plant (260 direct jobs): a 7-year, market-rate loan secured on substantially all company assets, with CEEFC and PenderFund receiving warrants and Conifex's lumber lender reimbursing up to $11M of capex; management says the liquidity lets it "plan a restart" and return the mill to normalized two-shift operations (Canada.ca, GlobeNewswire)
Australia's Parliament passed legislation Sept. 17 renaming the Anti-Dumping Commission the Australian Trade Remedies Commission and moving safeguard (import-surge) inquiries to it from the Productivity Commission, which had handled none since 1998; unions and the AFPA backed the change, with AFPA pressing for resources given a pending Russian LVL case that could take 12–18 months and Chinese imports up 63% in a year (Wood Central)
UK timber and panel imports fell 3.9% in H1 2026 (TDUK): softwood -4.9% to 2.90M m³, plywood -13.6% (softwood plywood -28.8%), engineered wood -13% with CLT -60.7% and glulam -17%, while MDF rose 13.1% as Chinese volumes doubled and particleboard gained 4.6% (Timberbiz)
Finland's roundwood market stayed unusually quiet in August: industrial purchases of ~2.0M m³ were ~17% below August 2025 and only marginally above July, yet sawlog prices held flat (softwood logs unchanged, birch logs +2%, pulpwood within 1%) (Global Wood Markets Info, Lesprom)
Japan expects a record 429 CLT projects in the year to March 2027 (327 of them housing, up from 357 and 252 projects in the prior two years; Okayama alone 155), yet domestic CLT output fell 9.5% to 19,000 m³ in 2025 against ~100,000 m³/yr of capacity and a 500,000 m³ 2030 target (Wood Central)
Forest & Wood Products Australia named Dr. Julianne O'Reilly-Wapstra CEO effective Dec. 1; the University of Tasmania Dean of Natural Sciences and forest scientist succeeds Andrew Leighton, who left June 30 (Wood Central, Timberbiz)
Skanska says the AI data-center and semiconductor build-out has pushed structural steel prices up ~25% in a year and lead times to ~55 weeks, opening a new North American market for mass timber (Global Wood Markets Info)
Co-generation at Mills
The first barge of major components for Irving Pulp & Paper's $1.5B Project NextGen cleared Saint John's Reversing Falls and landed at Lee Cove on Sept. 13; the project adds a new recovery boiler, steam turbine and green-energy generator while decommissioning an oil-fired boiler, targeting energy self-sufficiency, a 50% cut in emissions per tonne and 70%+ more kraft pulp output, backed by $660M in Canada Infrastructure Bank financing (PaperAge)
Wood Pellets
Drax's Sept. 17 trading update guides 2026 adjusted EBITDA to around the top of consensus (£698M; range £680–711M) and says it has "substantively contracted" all external biomass volumes needed for Drax Power Station across the new CfD period (April 2027–March 2031), alongside £1B+ of contracted forward power sales for 2026–28; North American pellet output was 1.9M t in H1 2026, down 10% (Drax, Biomass Magazine)
