Stora Enso's board formally approved demerging its Swedish forest assets (fair value SEK 63.8B/€5.8B; 12-month sales SEK 2.1B, adjusted EBIT SEK 1.4B) into a new Stockholm/Helsinki-listed company, Bergslagets Skogar, with an EGM on Dec. 15 and completion targeted for March 31, 2027, cutting Stora's net debt by ~€800M; Q3 adjusted EBIT rose 28% to €161M on sales of €2.24B as packaging volumes (+€31M) and lower variable costs (+€40M) outweighed price/mix, 2026 capex was trimmed to ~€500M, and Q4 is guided lower on consumer-board maintenance and rising wood costs (EUWID, Lesprom)
Suzano is raising eucalyptus hardwood pulp prices by US$50/t in Europe and the Americas for November orders — the second US$50 hike in two months — taking the European list price to US$1,410/t from US$1,360 (PaperAge)
CMPC CEO Francisco Ruiz-Tagle, with the company since 1991 and CEO since 2018, will step down April 30, 2027 and move to a strategy role while a board committee searches for a successor, following the US$420M containerboard sale to Smurfit Westrock and the US$365.5M sale of ~60,000 ha of Chilean pine plantations to J.P. Morgan Natural Capital (Lesprom)
UPM Adhesive Materials will build its first Indian factory — an acrylic-based coating line for self-adhesive label materials in Gujarat — opening in early 2028; investment and capacity were not disclosed (PaperAge)
Update: Operations have now stopped at AV Group's Nackawic, N.B. pulp mill — the union says the power boiler ran for the last time on Wednesday, Oct. 28 (CTV)
Forestry & Timber
New York DEC awarded $45M to 44 forest-products and tree-nursery projects on Oct. 29, led by $7.7M to B&B RE LLC (Oneida County) for pallet components from low-grade wood, $5.1M to Lyme Adirondack Forest Company to lift lumber output, $1.6M to Tri-Lox Millworks, $1.54M to Brookside Lumber in Moravia (crane mats from low-grade lumber) and $665K to Gutchess Lumber for inventory planning; the state expects ~1,000 extra truckloads of low-grade timber processed, 24 jobs and planning on 80,000+ additional private acres (Lesprom, FingerLakes1)
Japan's Q3 softwood lumber imports fell 29.6% y/y to ~724,000 m³; Canada stayed the top supplier and gained 4.1 points of share, Romania rose 9.7% and Germany collapsed 48.6% (Lesprom)
Ukrainian customs found false data in 657 timber certificates of origin across 2025–26 (violation reports worth UAH 158M), prosecutors say a developer of the state timber-accounting system sold 10,000+ unauthorised record changes in 2021–24 and 13 state-enterprise employees have been served notices, and several forged-certificate oak export cases (Vinnytsia, Odesa, Lviv, Chernivtsi) are in court — even as the EU rates Ukraine "low risk" under EUDR (Wood Central)
Montreal curved-plywood maker Seatply Products agreed to buy Autumn House of Granite Falls, N.C. — its first U.S. plant — and will spend several million dollars on new machinery there; terms undisclosed (Lesprom)
Co-generation at Mills
Candelaria Industries founder Rob Janicki, who agreed in June to buy the former McKinley paper mill in Port Angeles, Wash., wants to restart the site's biomass co-generation plant, reuse ~300,000 sq ft of industrial buildings and add containerized computing pods drawing 9.9 MW; the AWPPW, with fewer than 10 members left on a skeleton crew, has written to the mayor and Janicki demanding a seat in the talks and citing successor-agreement language in its contract, with a meeting targeted for the week of Nov. 9 (Peninsula Daily News)
Wood Pellets & Biomass
Japan's Q3 wood pellet imports rose 9.4% y/y to ~2.57M t (value +14.8%): Vietnam remained the top supplier but lost 4.9 points of share, shipments from China grew roughly 13-fold and Canadian volumes fell 17.7% (Lesprom)
Industry Technology Vendors
Valmet — Settled its arbitration with Metsä Fibre over deliveries to the Kemi bioproduct mill: Metsä Fibre had sought ~€47M two years ago and flagged up to ~€65M more, Valmet counterclaimed, and ~€33.5M remained in dispute at end-Q3; terms are confidential, the deal also covers certain other claims, and the effect will be booked in Q4 2026 results (Valmet, PULPAPERnews)
Raute — Q3 net sales fell 34% to €29.0M and comparable EBITDA to €3.2M (11.0%), though orders rose to €53M (from €38M) on a €31M plywood-mill expansion in Estonia; the order book is €85M (108), 2026 guidance was narrowed to €125–135M sales and €13–16M comparable EBITDA, and change negotiations covering all ~522 Finnish staff target up to 40 cuts in Finland (50 worldwide) and €4M of savings by end-2027, possibly merging three business units into two (Inderes, Daily Northern)
