Fortress Paper Ltd.

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver told reporters this week that the federal government may extend innovation programs designed to help the forest industry adjust to the challenges of a changing sector. “There may be a continuation of some programs that currently exist,” he said during a lunchtime speech at Paper Week in Montreal on Wednesday. "We should not underestimate the sector's resilience, the excellence of our forest products an...

Despite the closure of the NewPage Mill in Port Hawkesbury, NS, Nova Scotia Power (NSP) says it will move forward with plans to build a $200 million 60 megawatt biomass cogeneration plant on site. The plan to build the facility was negotiated prior to the pulp mill’s closure in September 2011. “The initial plan called for Nova Scotia Power to fund the project, which would be built and operated by NewPage,” wrote the Chronicle Herald t...

A new government program introduced last week will inject money into Atlantic Canada’s forestry sector in an attempt to diversify the region’s struggling industry. The initiative sees the Maritime Lumber Bureau partnering with the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador to invest in a program called Atlantic WoodWorks. According to an article published in the Am...

Less than a month after specialty paper manufacturer Fortress Paper began its production of specialty cellulose at its facility in Thurso, Quebec, another Canadian paper producer – Glatfelter Gatineau - ramped up production on its specialty products. This week, week the Pennsylvania-based company launched a $9-million production line that sees its Ottawa-valley mill double the output of high-absorbency paper. According to an article publ...

As a leading European innovator biotechnology, Finland is putting a large amount of resources into research and development in order to move the country in the direction of a bioeconomy. A recent article published by Lab Product News provides several examples of this new Finnish initiative. A non-profit group named the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland is one of the groups at the helm of the new movement. One of the biggest changes t...

The US Department of Energy has awarded Ameresco Inc. a sum of $795 million to finance, design, construct, operate and maintain a biomass cogeneration facility in South Carolina. This project marks the largest single-source energy performance savings contract (EPSC) that has ever been allocated by the US federal government. The energy generated from the plant will provide 30 per cent of the electricity needs of the 300-square mile Departmen...

Hydro-Québec announced a plan to purchase 150 megawatts of power generated by forest biomass cogeneration plants throughout the province. The power will come from several different plants and each plant is to generate no more than 50MW, according to The Montreal Gazette. “The price for the power, in 2012 dollars, will be 10.6 cents per kilowatt hour, the average price for power awarded in 2009 to successful bidders on a biomass power pro...

Three months after the closure of the NewPage mill in Port Hawkesbury, NS, four companies interested in purchasing the shuttered mill are due to submit their final bids this week. Though two of the bidders remain unnamed, the CBC says that Paper Excellence Canada and Stern Partners Inc. are the other parties who are vying for the mill and – should they win – are expected to maintain the mill as some sort of paper manufacturing facility. Th...

Resolute Forest Products, one of Canada’s largest pulp and paper companies, announced it’s intention to acquire a popular pulp producer with mills in Canada and the US. Fibrek produces virgin and recycled kraft pulp at mills located in Saint-Félicien, Québec, Fairmont, West Virginia, and in Menominee, Michigan with a combined annual production capacity of 760,000 tonnes. According to Richard Garneau, president and CEO of Resolute, the p...

Polyester prices in China are recovering as demand for textiles is rising, according to a report issued by Emerging Textiles. Last week, the Chinese government announced that credit conditions in the country would be eased so that companies could borrow more money from banks in order to stock up on materials. Polyester prices were bottoming out in China in order to accommodate the re-stock, but now the situation is improving, the magazine say...