One of Canada’s largest lumber producers is moving its corporate offices from British Columbia to the American South, with Interfor’s office at Peachtree City, on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia, set to become the company’s primary hub. That is according to a memo Chief Executive Ian Fillinger sent employees on 9 July, which has since been viewed by the Financial Post, with the shift to run over several years, largely through attrition and future hiring decisions.
Fillinger’s memo puts three-quarters of Interfor’s operations in the Central, Eastern, and Atlantic time zones, while the head office runs on Pacific time. The change, he claims, will place support functions closer to where the business operates, strengthening coordination, speed, and decision-making for mills and customers.
“There are no layoffs planned as part of this announcement,” Fillinger wrote to a workforce of 4,000, in a memo that commits to a continued West Coast presence. The memo named no specific functions for the move, and Interfor did not answer the Financial Post’s questions on positions affected or on whether the head office itself would follow.
Tariffs supplied the pressure long before the memo, with Interfor blaming United States duties when it idled two Northern Ontario sawmills indefinitely in April, and Canadian softwood shipments now facing a cumulative levy of 45 per cent. The company posted a net loss of C$344 million across 2025 on revenue of $2.81 billion, with duty deposits accumulating at the border.
America already buys most of what Interfor cuts, with the company’s November 2025 investor presentation stating that 84 per cent of lumber sales are in the United States. The same presentation places 62 per cent of operations across the US South and Northwest, with the balance split between the British Columbia interior and eastern Canada.
Peachtree City is no stranger to the company, which opened the office as a hub for its US Southeast operations in 2014 while buying Georgia sawmills. Shareholders met there this year, with the 2026 annual general meeting held in May, while the Québec exit closed the Montréal corporate office and left Canadian mills in British Columbia, Ontario, and New Brunswick.
It comes as a KPMG survey published on 7 July found nearly three in 10 Canadian manufacturers moving at least some production to the United States, with 11 per cent planning a headquarters shift within five years. Ottawa is answering with money and new markets, lending Millar Western $100 million to hold its western pulp mills at home while pushing Canadian wood exports toward buyers across the Pacific.
Most of Interfor’s 4.7 billion board feet of annual capacity already cuts in American mills, and the corporate functions now bound for Peachtree City follow the boards, the buyers, and the balance sheet that went south first.
