Hivest Capital Partners has completed its acquisition of Sustana (Rolland lineage; owned by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities since December 2021), naming former Sustana leader Kevin Richard CEO; assets include the Saint-Jérôme, Que. paper mill and converting plant, recycled fiber mills at Lévis, Que. and De Pere, Wis., and eight recovery facilities in the U.S. and Canada, with stated priorities of mill reliability, energy efficiency and selective North American acquisitions. Terms undisclosed (Paper Advance, PULPAPERnews)
Candelaria Industries founder Rob Janicki told Port Angeles, Wash. council on Oct. 20 he hopes to buy the ~70-acre former McKinley Mill site by year-end; phase one is three containerized computing pods drawing 9.9 MW inside an existing building, leveraging the site's 70 MW substation and 2014 biomass cogeneration plant, with wood/energy and marine tenants to follow. Most of 17 public commenters were skeptical and asked the city to extend its data-center moratorium (Peninsula Daily News)
EU negotiators agreed Oct. 20 to raise the ETS Market Stability Reserve cancellation threshold from 400M to 700M allowances (more than 3B invalidated since 2023), keeping a mechanism the Commission had proposed scrapping; Cepi's free-allocation and carbon-leakage concerns remain unresolved (Paper Advance)
China imported 8.39M t of wood pulp in Q3 (-1.1% y/y, value +0.5%); Brazil's share fell 4.1 points as its shipments dropped 14.1% while Thailand's rose 25.9%, and SHFE warehouse pulp stocks rose for a fifth straight week (Lesprom, Lesprom)
Forestry & Timber
Update: The Great Koala National Park bill cleared NSW Parliament on Friday after 14+ hours of upper-house debate, with the Nationals formally splitting from the Liberals who backed it; the Clean Energy Regulator registered the park's 117,000+ ha carbon project on Thursday (the park cannot commence until it is declared), and Timber NSW reports layoffs and engineering firms with no forward orders (Wood Central)
Reps. Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.) and Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) introduced the Mass Timber Growth and Innovation Act (H.R. 10852) on Oct. 19: a 10% investment credit for mass timber plants under the advanced manufacturing credit, a 20% research credit, and five more years to start construction; backed by the American Wood Council and Weyerhaeuser and referred to Ways and Means (Wood Central, Fordaq)
Victoria will match industry's A$1.9M to fund a A$3.8M expansion of AI bushfire-detection cameras to 18 sites covering 1.46M ha, run by HVP Plantations and the Green Triangle Fire Alliance; the alliance's seven existing cameras detected 46 unplanned fires in 2024–25, and HVP lost 10,000+ ha of plantations in this year's fires (Wood Central)
North American hardwood is reaching China via Vietnam: Vietnam-to-China logs and lumber rose 155.8% in January–July, oak lumber from Vietnam grew 60-fold in the first four months, and North American hardwood lumber made up 45.3% of July volume from Vietnam, while direct U.S. lumber shipments to China were down 32.2% in April (Wood Central)
Canada shipped ~2.402 BBF of sawn softwood to the U.S. in Q3, down 3.7% y/y; Madison's lumber price index slipped to US$495/mfbm for the week of Oct. 23 (-$4 w/w, -$5 m/m) (EUWID, Madison's)
New Zealand export log prices held firm in October as Chinese buyers returned after Golden Week and Indian demand improved, though higher diesel prices are eating into harvesting and transport margins (GWMI, Timberbiz)
Poland's softwood lumber output jumped 24% m/m in September to ~242,200 m³ but remained 4.9% below September 2025 (Lesprom)
Wood Pellets & Biomass
The UK waste wood market remains oversupplied, the Wood Recyclers' Association says: biomass and panel-board plant demand is below normal after 2025 outages and a dry summer that lowered moisture content, stocks are well above normal, gate fees are under upward pressure and recyclers are restricting intake; England's RPS 361 allows extra storage for producers under pressure (Bioenergy Insight)
Industry Technology Vendors
Teknosavo — Says customers of its SmartTM AI-based wood measurement and yard-to-digester optimization suite have cut wood consumption 3–5% (up to 8% in special cases); with raw material 60–70% of pulp mill operating costs, a 3% saving at a 500,000 t mill avoids 150–190 ha/yr of clear-cut harvest, and ROI is typically under a year (PULPAPERnews)
Trimble — Q3 2026 earnings call set for Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 8 a.m. ET (PR Newswire via Placera)
Omya — The European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation on Oct. 23 into whether the calcium carbonate supplier abused a dominant position through exclusive-purchasing obligations and exclusivity rebates imposed on European paper makers; Omya says it is cooperating and no deadline has been set (Paper Advance)
