B.C. Conservatives won a majority on Saturday — elected or leading in ~64 of 93 seats with ~48% of the vote at 94% counted — making Lorne Doerkson premier, while David Eby is resigning as NDP leader. The Conservative platform commits to a 45M m³ minimum annual harvest (vs 37.7M m³ in 2025), a major-project-style permitting process measured in months, returning old-growth deferral land to the working forest, compensation for licensees when tenure is reallocated, B.C.-lumber-first public procurement, mill upgrade funding and logging/mill waste for renewable fuels, and projects stumpage revenue doubling by 2028-29 (The Tyee, The Narwhal, Lesprom)
Australian sawn-softwood supply "hit a ceiling around 2015," according to a Terrafolia Advisory analysis by former HQPlantations COO Steve Walker: since then imports have met 83% of added framing demand in housing upswings (12% before 2015), import share peaked at 21.8% in 2021-22, structural pine prices remain ~40% above 2019-20, Chinese LVL shipments hit a record 254,065 m³ last financial year, and only 11% of Tasmania's softwood harvest becomes sawn timber versus 23% on the mainland (Wood Central)
South Korea's amended National Forests Act took full effect Oct. 22: government agencies and public institutions can now receive domestic national-forest timber at no cost for wood-construction R&D and demonstration projects, a measure aimed at lifting a timber self-sufficiency rate of roughly 10% (Timberbiz)
India's lumber imports fell 12.4% in August while the average import price rose 6.3% (Lesprom)
Paper & Pulp Mills
China's imported softwood pulp price fell 2.9% to 4,868.7 yuan/t in mid-October, while corrugated paper edged up 0.4% over the ten-day period (Lesprom)
Co-generation & Mill Energy
Chapleau Cree First Nation and Commercial Bioenergy Inc. have formed a joint venture, Chapleau District Heating Company, to build a 3 MW thermal biomass plant fuelled by wood residues from GreenFirst Forest Products' Chapleau, Ont. sawmill, selling heat to institutional buildings on a per-kWh basis; the Township of Chapleau is a possible expansion partner, and no budget, financing or commissioning date has been set (Paper Advance)
