Canadian Mills Cut Output as Senators Told US Cannot Be Replaced
Markets beyond the United States bought less Canadian softwood in the first half of the year, with the US still taking nine of every ten cubic metres exported.
A flatbed loaded with softwood lumber turns toward the commercial crossing into the United States, with Canadian sawmills producing 6.7 per cent less lumber in July than a year earlier.
Canada’s sawmills have lost the ground they made up in June, with July output 6.7 per cent below a year earlier after the gap had narrowed to 1.9 per cent the month before. That is according to new data released on Monday by Statistics Canada, the national statistics agency, which shows mills producing 3,546.4 thousand cubic metres in July.
“It’s not a matter of just putting sticks on a boat and sending them somewhere else,” Derek Nighbor, president and chief executive of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC), told the Senate’s national finance committee. Nighbor said five Canadian mills have closed this year, and he estimated the country’s lumber and wood product sales to the United States at C$14 billion a year.
Japan, China, South Korea, and the European Union all hold promise for Canadian producers, Nighbor said, but he warned senators that those markets could not absorb enough Canadian wood to replace American demand. He described the diversification opportunity as “incremental”, saying that overseas growth would require work on foreign building codes and on teaching builders there how to use Canadian wood.
Softwood lumber exports from Canada fell 12 per cent to 13.2 million cubic metres in the first half of the year, with American buyers taking 1.73 million cubic metres less than a year earlier. Every other market combined took 3 per cent less, at 1.5 million cubic metres, according to Statistics Canada trade data, with the United States still holding 89 per cent of the trade.
Members of a Canadian delegation inspect lumber in Japan, where shipments of Canadian softwood fell 19 per cent in the first half of the year.
China, the largest buyer after the United States, took 525,000 cubic metres over the half, up 3 per cent, whilst Japan took 373,000 cubic metres, down 19 per cent. Japanese buyers still paid nearly twice the American unit value for Canadian softwood, while German buyers paid more than three times that amount.
Sawmills produced 12.8 per cent less lumber in January and 7 per cent less in February than in the same months of 2025, with output trailing last year’s levels for most of 2026. Statistics Canada counted March and April output 10.5 and 9.7 per cent below a year earlier, before the shortfall narrowed in June.
As it stands, most Canadian producers pay a 35.16 per cent duty deposit at the US border, with a 10 per cent national security tariff on softwood charged on top since last October. Global Affairs Canada expects the US Commerce Department to publish final rates later this month, after it set a preliminary combined duty of 24.83 per cent in April.
“The time has come for Canada to stop subsidising its lumber industry,” US Lumber Coalition executive director Zoltan van Heyningen said in April, calling on Canada to “reduce its massive excess lumber production to meet market realities.” Meanwhile, US lumber futures settled at US$526.50 per thousand board feet on Friday, 14.5 per cent below a year earlier.
Bình luận