Southern Eucalyptus Undercuts Softwood as Domtar Idles a BC Mill
Port Mellon loses 400 jobs by mid-October, with provincial records confirming more than $50 million reaching Domtar since 2019.
Steam rises over the Howe Sound mill at Port Mellon on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast, where 400 jobs and 380,000 tonnes of northern bleached softwood kraft go by mid-October, on a site that has made pulp since 1909. (Photo Credit: Edgar Bullon / Dreamstime.com)
The company that has bought seven British Columbia mills since 2010 will indefinitely idle two more of them at Port Mellon, ending 400 jobs on a Sunshine Coast site that has made pulp since 1909. That is according to Luc Thériault, Domtar’s President for Canada and CEO of its pulp and wood products business, whose 20 August announcement takes 380,000 metric tonnes of northern bleached softwood kraft off the world market every year.
British Columbia Forests Minister Ravi Parmar puts a plantation crop grown half a world away at the centre of the decision, arguing that advances in hardwood pulping technology keep compressing the price of market pulp. He counts the province approaching its lowest pulp prices in 100 years once adjusted for inflation, and wants the sector repositioned before more of it goes.
“B.C.’s northern bleached softwood kraft pulp is being outcompeted by low-cost hardwood eucalyptus pulp, which is found primarily in the southern hemisphere,” Parmar said, promising income and mental health support to affected communities within hours of the announcement.
“The business decision to indefinitely idle these facilities is not a reflection on the employees,” Thériault said, citing sustained poor global pulp pricing, a decline in affordable domestic fibre, and reduced demand from Asia, and naming no plantation competitor anywhere in the announcement.
Nearly C$500 million has gone into the operation since Domtar acquired it in 2010, including the Bayview Fibre chipping facility, which has been idle alongside the mill. Previous owners committed considerably more, and a $1.3 billion reconstruction through the 1990s set Port Mellon’s machines to manufacture high-quality newsprint for Japanese presses.
“B.C. needs more predictable and economic access to wood supply and a regulatory and cost environment that keeps mills operating and attracts investment,” Kim Haakstad said, and the BC Council of Forest Industries chief executive counts at least 21 provincial lumber mills closed permanently or indefinitely since 2023. Four pulp mills have closed or curtailed inside nine months, against more than 15,000 forestry positions eliminated since 2022.
British Columbia has paid Domtar more than $50 million since 2019, a figure the province confirmed, and $1.4 million of that went to the Howe Sound mill, which is now being idled. Another $17 million went to Crofton on Vancouver Island, announced for permanent closure in December 2025, and Ottawa contributed a further $14.3 million toward restarting that same operation in 2023.
Greenpeace Canada reports more than $200 million in payments to Domtar and its subsidiaries between 2020 and 2024, in a January report that treats Catalyst Paper, Resolute Forest Products, and Paper Excellence as a single group holding 22 million hectares of Canadian forest. Five of the seven British Columbia mills that Domtar has acquired since 2010 have now stopped production: Mackenzie, Powell River, and Chetwynd, with Crofton and Port Mellon to follow.
A loaded eucalyptus truck pulls out beside the stand it came from in Uruguay, where plantation hardwood feeds the low-cost southern hemisphere pulp Ravi Parmar says is outcompeting British Columbia’s softwood kraft. (Photo Credit: reisegraf.ch / Alamy)
“No more pulp after 117 years,” is how Andrew Appleton described it to CBC News, and the tugboat captain of 22 years supplied the photograph the network published of his own workplace. Paper manufacturing ceased there in 2015, taking up to 180 positions with it.
Idled equipment remains in operable condition, and Wood Central understands the province is not using the company’s word for it, since Parmar’s statement characterises the decision as a curtailment throughout. Either way, it strips coastal contractors of a chip customer, and the Truck Loggers Association called the announcement a setback for members who harvest, haul, and supply fibre.
It comes as Canfor confirmed the permanent closure of its Northwood mill at Prince George in July, stripping 300 jobs and 300,000 tonnes of kraft capacity out this quarter, and Crofton will not restart either.
The remaining work at Port Mellon concludes in mid-October, and Thériault says the business will evaluate future opportunities if conditions improve. Neither the price of southern eucalyptus pulp nor the cost of British Columbia fibre is a condition Domtar sets.
Bình luận