Canfor will permanently close its Northwood pulp mill in Prince George, cutting 300 jobs and stripping 300,000 tonnes of northern bleached softwood kraft from its annual output, with the wind-down set to finish in the final quarter of 2026. That is according to Susan Yurkovich, the president and CEO of Canfor, who confirmed the permanent closure in a statement yesterday, blaming a structural shift in global pulp markets and persistent problems accessing fibre.
“Incredibly difficult news that will have a significant impact on our employees,” Yurkovich said of a decision she stressed reflects nothing about the workforce, pledging severance for the 300 workers and redeployment to other Canfor sites where positions exist. Northwood has worked tirelessly through challenging conditions, she said, and the company is grateful for the effort.
The decision, reported by CBC News, ends production at a site Canfor has owned for 27 years, since its 1999 takeover of Northwood Inc. One of the mill’s two production lines wound down in August 2024, part of cuts that stripped 580,000 tonnes of annual kraft capacity from Prince George in under two years.
Behind the shutdown sits a pulp market flooded with new capacity, with the statement describing an oversupply that has pressed global prices lower and left Canfor Pulp in a prolonged period of unsustainable losses. Red ink was already visible in April, when the pulp and paper segment posted a C$16.2 million operating loss for the opening quarter, six weeks after Canfor took full ownership of Canfor Pulp Products.
“Heartbreaking for the workers, their families, contractors and the entire Prince George community,” is how BC Forests Minister Ravi Parmar described the closure in a statement released within hours, naming US tariffs and duties, weak lumber prices, and a steep and continued decline in pulp prices among the forces pressing on the sector. Parmar has contacted Unifor Local 603 and the City of Prince George, with staff across the ministries of Forests, Jobs and Economic Growth, and Social Development and Poverty Reduction deploying support to affected workers.
Ottawa will carry part of the transition through the recently signed Canada-BC Cooperative Prosperity Agreement, which wrote a 1 December deadline into the softwood lumber file, while the province promises one-window, cross-government access to retraining and redeployment services. Local WorkBC centres will deal directly with the employer, the union, and affected workers, backed by forest sector support services and the Northern Development Initiative Trust’s Canada-BC Workforce Tariff Response Forestry Grant.
“Consequences of inaction for the struggling forestry sector are happening in real time,” said Kim Haakstad, the president and CEO of the BC Council of Forest Industries, who urged both governments to move on the Forest Sector Transformation Task Force recommendations covering predictable access to wood. That task force warned in June that homegrown, structural problems threaten Canada’s forest industry with an existential crisis, a finding delivered alongside close to C$130 million for 56 projects nationwide.
One week before the announcement, Saik’uz First Nation and the District of Vanderhoof held a joint press conference, demanding that locally harvested timber remain in the region and arguing that multinational companies continue to gain access to wood while cutting local manufacturing capacity. Warning that provincial decisions authorise harvesting levels out of step with forest conditions, Saik’uz Chief Priscilla Mueller said her nation has spent years building a land-use plan to anchor a locally owned industry, mills included.
“Healthy forests, strong local communities and a sustainable forest sector,” is the shared goal Mueller named at the Vanderhoof conference, one she says must truly benefit the people who live there. Vanderhoof Mayor Kevin Moutray backed her, arguing decision-making over the land base belongs with local government and First Nations rather than boardrooms answering to global markets.
“That fibre should not be rolling down the road to another community,” Moutray said of the town’s one remaining sawmill, insisting the industry can be right-sized if the wood stays local. The Plateau sawmill closed in Canfor’s 2024 retreat, leaving Vanderhoof a single operating mill and a hole in its tax base.
Wood Central understands the Northwood closure will also cut a chip market out from under the region’s independent sawmills, which sell residuals into the kraft mill and now lose a revenue line that helped keep their own operations viable. Feeder mills inside Canfor’s own network went first, with the company shutting its Vanderhoof and Fort St. John sawmills in December 2024.
Northwood now enters an orderly wind-down toward a late fourth-quarter shutdown, and when the last digester cools, Yurkovich’s company will have removed 880,000 tonnes of annual kraft capacity from Prince George since early 2023.
