Fibre Excellence Saint-Gaudens is finished as a going concern: the Toulouse Commercial Court on Nov. 12 ordered the bleached kraft pulp mill to cease operations immediately after no firm takeover offer arrived by the Oct. 22 deadline, laying off ~300 staff at the mill and Labège HQ (~30 kept to secure the site). Talks with Portuguese group Ghost, the state and the Occitanie region continue, and a Ghost-led restart of pulp production is still pencilled in for end-2027; workers get one-year CSP contracts (PrintIndustry.news)
New Brunswick opened the 180-day public participation process for renewing the Class 1 air-quality approval at Irving Pulp & Paper's Reversing Falls complex in Saint John (~1,000 t/d bleached kraft, ~200 t/d tissue); the current approval expires May 31, 2027 (GNB)
European recovered-paper prices have risen sharply through 2026 as Indian and Southeast Asian buyers compete with domestic mills for OCC, while European containerboard demand is expected to grow only 1–1.5% this year (PULPAPERnews)
Forestry & Timber
Holmen will end sawmilling at Kroksjön near Skellefteå, Sweden by March 1, 2027 — 50 redundancy notices — keeping planing, painting, impregnation and finger-jointing there fed by its Bygdsiljum sawmill; Holmen Wood Products lost SEK 170M in Jan–Sep (vs SEK 70M loss) on deliveries of 943,000 m³ (Wood & Panel)
A New Forests fund will buy nearly 11,000 ha of radiata pine plantations from AKD, Australia's largest softwood sawmiller, and Heywood Plantations; the ACCC cleared the deal Nov. 10, AKD keeps its sawmills and will buy sawlogs and pulpwood under long-term supply agreements (Lesprom)
Update: Sexton Lumber has laid off about 100 employees after the Oct. 29 fire; owner Kevin Sexton hopes repairs are done in ~3 weeks, and the NL Forestry Industry Association estimates the Bloomfield mill could lose 8–12% of its annual operations (CBC)
Update: CME lumber futures hit a 26-month low this week, dipping below US$510/mbf on expectations Canadian lumber tariffs could be cut, and closed Nov. 12 at US$518 (−5.2% m/m, −9.9% y/y) (Trading Economics, GWMI)
Germany's softwood log market is losing its 2026 price strength: spruce prices fell in several regions as sawmills limit purchases and more beetle- and drought-damaged timber reaches the market (GWMI)
US hardwood log exports fell 40.4% q/q in Q3 to US$219M (463,014 m³, −32.6% in volume) as Vietnam and China accounted for 85% of the decline; walnut, still the largest category at US$92M, dropped 48.6% (Fordaq)
Bernie McGlynn Lumber's 30,000-sq-ft expansion at its Mildmay, Ontario hardwood sawmill — part of a $5.3M modernization — is roofing now and targets an early-2027 opening (Midwestern Newspapers)
Wood Pellets & Biomass
AF&PA warned that federal proposals to incentivize renewable fuel from pulpwood would put a subsidized buyer into mills' ~100-mile fibre baskets, urging policy that distinguishes mill residuals from pulpwood and a "market failure" test for private-land biomass; the industry employs 925,000+ (Papnews)
UK wood pellet imports rose 4.6% y/y in Q3 to 2.48 Mt, with the US still the largest supplier, Canadian shipments up 68.3% and the average CIF price down 7.9% (Lesprom)
US wood pellet production slipped 0.3% y/y to 853,100 t in August (−2.4% m/m), while UK wood-chip imports fell 63.4% in September with prices down 11% (Lesprom, Lesprom)
Industry Technology Vendors
Dieffenbacher Maschinenfabrik (Zaisenhausen) — The panel-line and short-cycle laminating-press builder filed for insolvency under self-administration; the court approved it and appointed a trustee, with the aim of restructuring and continuing operations. The Eppingen-based Dieffenbacher Group stressed on Nov. 11 that the Zaisenhausen company is legally separate and the group is unaffected (HK Magazin, GWMI)
