Daiken North America will draw an additional $425,000 from Ontario’s Forest Biomass Program to scale up a laminated panel built to displace imported hardwood plywood, the province’s second grant to the Huntsville project inside a year. That is according to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, which confirmed the top-up builds on an earlier $10 million grant toward the company’s $70 million production line upgrade.
Manufacturing is scheduled to start this summer at the upgraded facility, creating 10 jobs and keeping the 128 already on the books, according to the ministry. Panels off the line will supply flooring, recreational vehicles and modular housing, sold into domestic and international markets.
“We found the biggest potential market in North America,” said Daiken chief executive Tiger Yoshiura, whose Japanese parent developed DIO woodcore in 2017-18 and picked Huntsville to make it. The panel carries the strength and nail-holding of oriented strand board and the smooth face of particleboard, in custom thicknesses as thin as 2.7 millimetres.
Beyond the plant gate, the project is expected to open a market for 100,000 cubic metres of underused wood, increasing demand for harvesting, hauling and trucking across the regional supply chain. Ontario’s Forest Biomass Program backs projects that expand the use of forest biomass, putting low-grade fibre to work rather than leaving it in the bush.
“Another chapter for our province’s innovative forest sector,” said Kevin Holland, Ontario’s Associate Minister of Forestry and Forest Products, who has tied the funding to the province’s Forest Biomass Action Plan. Under that plan, the province says its forests could sustainably yield twice the wood the sector harvests each year.
Wood Central understands that the Huntsville plant traces back to a Domtar mill opened in 1976, which passed to Panolam in 1995 before Daiken took it over in 2024. Its Japanese parent reported sales worth $2.3 billion in 2022, across a workforce of nearly 4,000 worldwide.
Ontario’s forest sector generated $21.6 billion from manufactured goods and services in 2023 and carried 128,000 direct and indirect jobs the following year, according to ministry figures. Supporting the Daiken line is expected to feed 28 forest sector businesses across Northern and rural Ontario.
Commercial production is now due this summer rather than in the northern spring, and Yoshiura wants the $70 million line to make Huntsville known across the forest industry. Provincial money now runs to $10.4 million of that cost, on the ministry’s figures, a wager that a single Ontario panel can hold ground against imported plywood in a tariff-hit North American market.
