Truck driver shortages hitting Canada’s forest products sector

February 5, 2018
Category: Today's Takeaway

We’ve made some changes: if you’re having trouble finding your favourite news—keep scrolling—because the Tree Frog News is shaking up the order of things and adding a new Health and Safety category. Forest company and business news has been renamed Business & Politics and is now the lead category, followed by Wood & Paper Products, Forestry, Carbon & Climate and finally, Health & Safety.

In today’s news: a shortage of truck drivers has forced at least one producer [Weyerhaeuser] to slow production; Don Demens corrects the record on WFP’s Somass mill curtailment—”it’s due to a lack of suitable log supply and softwood duties, not log exports”; and Millar Western makes seven senior management appointments. Other companies in the news include Domtar and Northern Pulp, Port Hawksesbury and Montrose Forest Products.

In Forestry news: BC’s Chief Forester says not all timber destroyed by the 2017 fires should be salvaged; fire ecologist Robert Gray says “dead wood must be salvaged from the forest floor” to prevent wildfires; Alberta ramps up “a war that can never fully be won” against the pine beetle; and BC MLA [Donna Barnett] calls for aggressive action on the Spruce beetle.

Finally, the building material of the future is… old buildings (just add mushrooms).

— Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor

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