Alberta’s Fox Creek sawmill will cut its last board for Canfor, with the permanent closure removing 120 million board feet of annual lumber capacity and ending nearly 15 years of production. That is according to the company’s announcement published on Tuesday, which blamed prolonged weak lumber markets, persistent US softwood duties and tariffs, and a reduced fibre supply due to recent wildfires and the conclusion of the province’s mountain pine beetle management strategy.
The mill owes its existence to the insect now written into its closure notice, with Millar Western rebuilding Fox Creek in 2011 as a C$45.8 million single-shift plant cutting the extra timber Alberta freed under its plan to remove beetle-prone pine. An electrical fire destroyed the original sawmill in August 2008, and the replacement was restarted with a design capacity of 117 million board feet and 55 full-time jobs.
Keeping the mill fed took government help in recent years, with Alberta’s Ministry of Forestry and Parks supporting extra fibre sources, though the company now says the regional wood basket can no longer sustain the operation with the beetle program over and wildfire-damaged timber largely exhausted. Fire has squeezed the log yard before, with Canada’s record 2023 season forcing a three-week curtailment at Fox Creek.
Canfor inherited the mill through its 2022 purchase of Millar Western’s solid wood business, a $420 million deal that added 630 million board feet of capacity across Fox Creek, Whitecourt, and the Spruceland Millworks plant at Acheson. Wood Central understands the mill has run a single production shift plus a maintenance shift throughout, cutting dimension lumber from spruce and pine for Canadian and US markets.
The closure leaves Grande Prairie and Whitecourt sawing lumber for Canfor in Alberta alongside value-added lines at Spruceland and PinkWood, with production at Fox Creek set to end by late summer and the company promising to seek roles elsewhere for the mill’s workers. PinkWood is the newest of those plants, with Canfor completing its purchase of Western Canada’s largest I-joist plant in Calgary on 3 July, even as capital across the group continues to flow toward the US South.
It comes as Canfor confirmed the permanent closure of its Northwood pulp mill in Prince George on 14 July, a shutdown removing 300 jobs and 300,000 tonnes of annual kraft pulp capacity by late in the fourth quarter. “We recognise this is incredibly difficult news that will have a significant impact,” Susan Yurkovich, Canfor’s President and CEO, said of that closure.
Benchmark lumber has climbed even as Canfor retreats, with wildfires across Western Canada driving the Chicago futures contract to a 12-month high of $650.06 per thousand board feet on Monday, while the effective duty-and-tariff rate on most Canadian softwood entering the United States holds at 34.83 per cent.
