Forest products

The cause of the explosion and resulting fire at the Pacific BioEnergy Pellet Plant in Prince George, British Columbia on December 17, 2010 was been determined.

The blast was ignited by sparks in the plant’s fibre drying system.

Lumber went up the upper limit allowed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, reaching the highest price in more than four years reports Bloomberg. Lumber futures for March delivery jumped by the CMEs daily limit of $ 10, or 3%, to $ 340 per 1,000 board feet as of 8:45 a.m. in Chicago.

Finnish Yle reports on a raw timber cartel, which operated in Finland between 1997-2004. Forest Research Institute Metla estimates the value of direct losses for private forest owners to over one billion Euros. The indirect losses reached a few hundred million Euros.

The Uruguayan government gave permission to Celulosa Arauco and the Swedish-Finnish company Stora Enso for the construction of a pulp mill in the area of  Conchillas, Uruguay. The Project is planed to have a capacity of 1.3 million metric tons of pulp a year, but it is not yet defined.

Over the past 20 years, pulp mills in Eastern Canada have consistently had higher wood fiber costs than the mills in the Western provinces with the exception of a short period in 1995, according to the North American Wood Fiber Review.