Domtar's idled Coosa Pines, Alabama pulp mill could cost the region nearly $7B in lost economic activity over ten years, per a forester/adviser analysis reported by the WSJ; the May idling cut ~250–285 jobs, and Q2 pine pulpwood fell to $29.02/ton delivered with stumpage at $5.40/ton across ~1M acres of supply area (Wood Central)
AF&PA August data: US packaging papers & specialty packaging shipments rose 4% YoY (YTD +5%, bleached operating rate 91.1%, inventories at a 13-month high), while printing-writing shipments fell 7% YoY as July net imports jumped 26% (UFS +38%, CFS +51%) (PaperAge – packaging, PaperAge – P&W)
Sappi Europe will raise coated mechanical reel prices by €20/t for all October deliveries, citing energy, transport, labour, chemical and raw-material costs (PULPAPERnews)
Forestry & Timber
Ireland's mills bought a record 3.81M m³ of roundwood in 2025 (+7%), with private forests supplying a decade-high 1.61M m³ (42%) after Storm Éowyn while public supply fell to 2.2M m³, the lowest since 2021; roundwood for burning nearly doubled to 340,000 m³ (Wood Central, Fordaq)
Madison's Lumber Prices Index fell 2% to US$514/mfbm for the week ending Sept. 18, giving back the prior week's gain and sitting ~1% below a month ago (Fordaq)
New Hampshire's SB 529 (effective Aug. 18) requires state-funded projects to prefer US-sourced spruce-pine-fir, and from October NH-harvested SPF-south must be accepted wherever SPF is specified — one of 233 domestic-procurement bills tracked in 2026 (Wood Central)
A single West Palm Beach building official will rule on MiMar, a 25-storey mass-timber residential tower by Jeff Greene and Carlo Ratti Associati, under "alternative means and methods" because Florida's code has no tall-timber provisions after the Building Commission rejected three mass-timber construction types (Wood Central)
Australia's A$200M+ "Precinct" engineered-wood hub at Portland, Victoria (stage one: glulam plant, sawmill and log merchandiser processing 300,000 t/yr of logs, 74 jobs) holds an investor symposium Oct. 14 with a feasibility study due 2027; Raute and New Forests are among the presenters (Wood Central)
Austria joined the €233M Horizon Europe FOREST Partnership as its first call (FORESTPathways, up to €40M, 36 funders in 27 countries) opened with a Dec. 2 pre-proposal deadline and a dedicated timber/wood-products stream (Fordaq)
UPM's plywood spin-off stays on schedule: FIN-FSA approved the WISA Group prospectus supplement Sept. 18 and interim CFO Lasse von Hertzen was made permanent; the demerger completes Oct. 31 with Nasdaq Helsinki trading from Nov. 2 (PULPAPERnews, Fordaq)
Industry Technology Vendors
Raute — AmberBirch opened its €51M birch-veneer expansion in Jēkabpils, Latvia on Sept. 17, doubling capacity to 90,000 m³/yr on a €20M Raute package (log handling, peeling at up to 350 m/min, drying, grading and analysers) and adding 40 jobs (Fordaq)
