Operations News

In the early morning hours of Wednesday, Aug. 18, an explosion rocked a relatively small building at Canton's Evergreen Packaging Paper Mill.

Weyerhaeuser has announced the appointment of Travis Keatley as senior vice president of Timberlands, effective Sept. 13. Keatley has served as vice president of Western Timberlands for the company since January 2020, and his appointment follows the planned retirement of Adrian Blocker, who will stay on through mid-October to serve as a senior advisor and aid in the transition.

Canfor opened its Houston mill August 9, following a two-week shutdown caused by rail system bottlenecks and other problems in southern B.C. owing to wildfire outbreaks there.

Interfor is expecting production disruptions at its British Columbia Interior, Canada, sawmills during the 3Q 2021 due to the ongoing impacts of wildfires and other factors on log supply.

A Packaging Corporation of America employee was killed Thursday afternoon, July 29, in a workplace incident, the Hardin County Sheriff's Department reports.

Saica Pack successfully manufactured more than 1 million square meters worth of corrugated cardboard at its Thrapston facility near Northampton, the UK.

Ahlstrom-Munksjö will restart one of its saturator in its Turin plant in Italy to support strong demand for high performance filtration media.

The Vancouver-based lumber producer says about 115 million board feet of capacity will be reduced during the third quarter due to significant supply chain challenges and a transportation backlog.

The Public and Private Workers of Canada Local 2 is bringing attention to issues at the Paper Excellence Canada Catalyst Crofton mill it says have plagued the membership for quite some time.

Swedish forestry group Södra's three pulp mills in Värö, Mörrum, and Mönsterås, Sweden, are jointly making a major investment in one thousand wireless Airius vibration sensors with temperature measurement that transfer vibration data via the cellular network.

Sonae Arauco inaugurated a distribution centre (DC) for the North East Europe (NEE) region. Shorter delivery times and greater flexibility offer improved planning reliability for customers. This has been made possible by restructuring the logistics processes and, last but not least, the new Sonae Arauco Distribution Centre.

Stora Enso's pilot facility for producing bio-based carbon materials from lignin has started operations. This follows the company's EUR 10 million investment announced in 2019. Pilot production of Lignode® by Stora Enso, wood-based carbon for batteries, is currently being ramped up. Applications include electric vehicles and consumer electronics as well as large-scale energy storage systems.

The civil unrest referenced in our market update of 14th July appears to be under control. Intensive work by government agencies and business is focused on ensuring that supply chain disruptions are resolved, and people can move safely to and from work. Sappi's employees at the affected mills were able to return to work on Monday 19th July.

Marco Hilty, (49), Ph.D. in Business Administration from University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), has been appointed President, Flexible Packaging and a member of the Global Executive Team at Huhtamaki as of September 1, 2021. He will report to President and CEO Charles Héaulmé and will be based in Ronsberg, Germany.

The unfortunate incidents of civil unrest, violence and criminal activity which are being widely reported through news channels are also impacting Sappi's South African operations.

Paperboard production at the Metsä Board Husum mill has resumed to normal production levels following a fire at the pulp mill's wood chip conveyor on 18 June.

PotlatchDeltic Corporation announced the appointment of Ashlee Cribb as Vice President, Wood Products effective July 28. Ashlee succeeds Tom Temple, who will be retiring later this year.

Over the next three years, the number of employees in the Södra Building Systems business segment will be doubled.

On Friday, July 2 at around 10:45 p.m., Friendly Fire Department was dispatched to the West Fraser lumber mill.

Ahlstrom-Munksjö is on track expanding production capacity at its Malmedy plant in Belgium, specialized in the production of nonwovens for wallcovering. The EUR 10 million investment, announced in January 2020, will double the capacity of the plant and diversify the production to also cover filtration materials. The investment will create some 40 new jobs locally.

Canfor Corporation and Canfor Pulp Products Inc. are pleased to announce the appointment of the companies' newest board member, Sandra Stuart.

The Georgia-Pacific Corporation plant caught fire Wednesday evening, June 16, at the site in Brookhaven.

A spokesperson for Georgia-Pacific said damage from the fire was relatively minor and that internal systems helped suppress the flames before they spread. However, fire crews were still on the scene to check for pop-up fire or extension. Heavy smoke was also an obstacle for crews that night.

A conveyor feeding wood chips both to the hardwood and softwood digesters at Metsä Board's Husum pulp mill in Sweden caught fire on Friday, 18 June at about 12.30 CET. The city fire brigade managed to get the fire under control by about 14.30 CET and could hand over the responsibilities for surveillance to the Husum mill local fire brigade at 21.30 CET.

No one is injured after a fire in a machine at the Georgia Pacific mill in Green Bay on Saturday night, June 26.