Canfor at a Glance

Canfor is one of the world’s largest producers of sustainable lumber, pulp and paper. We’ve built our reputation on the quality of our products, the reliability of our supply and our superior customer service. Find out more about why customers around the world prefer Canfor.

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Lumber

Renewable. Sustainable.
Grown by the power of the sun.

Wood is an excellent choice for environmentally responsible construction.

Canfor’s kiln-dried Spruce-Pine-Fir (SPF) and Southern Yellow Pine (SYP) lumber products are ideal for a wide range of residential, commercial and industrial construction. Our consistent, high-quality lumber yields many benefits for builders – including less waste and fewer construction delays – that translate to higher profits.

Spruce - Pine - Fir (SPF)

Our kiln-dried Spruce-Pine-Fir (SPF) is the preferred choice of framing professionals because it is stable, less prone to crook or bow, is straighter than green wood and other species, and is lightweight and easier to work with. It is easy to cut, nail and screw.

Southern Yellow Pine (SYP)

Our Southern Yellow Pine (SYP) delivers strength and stability, and its natural beauty provides architectural appeal. We offer high-quality treated, untreated and remanufactured SYP products.

Canfor RED

Canfor RED products originate from our western Canadian fibre baskets. They include our premium J-Grade products destined for the Japan market, and SPF products made from fibre less impacted by the mountain pine beetle.

Sawmill Operations

We convert logs into lumber at our sawmills, with automated and manual checks at each step to ensure our high standards are being met. All of our mills have quality policies registered to the ISO9001 standard.

Show Mill Areas

1

Log storage

Our Canadian mills have yards where we store logs for processing during the times of the year when the soil is too wet for harvesting. Our southern U.S. mills do not store logs.

2

Debarking and Scanning

When the log enters the mill, its bark is removed, and the log is scanned to determine the best sawing pattern to yield the highest quality and greatest amount of dimension lumber.

3

Sawing

Using the scanning knowledge, the logs are cut into lumber. Most of our facilities have curve sawing technology which can follow any bends in a log to maximize lumber recovery volumes.

4

Trimmer

After the lumber is sawn each board travels through a trimmer, removing the rough ends.

5

Sorting

The boards are sorted by dimension and moisture, before they are stacked and sent to the drying kilns.

6

Dry Kilns

Using kilns fuelled by biomass or natural gas, we dry all our lumber to a consistent moisture content.

7

Planing

The boards are planed to provide a smooth finish.

8

Grading

The boards are graded to extract maximum value and provide quality product to our customer that meet specifications.

9

Storage

The lumber is grade stamped, sorted by grade and dimension, stacked and wrapped for storage and delivery to the customer.

10

Rail/Transportation

Our products move across North America by train and truck, and overseas by ship.

11

Chips/Sawdusts

The chips and sawdust from our lumber manufacturing processes are used to make pulp, paper and green energy, bringing our utilization of wood fibre to virtually 100%.

12

Energy System

Many of our mills use wood residuals to generate heat to run their kilns and heat the building. This reduces our reliance on natural gas, and lightens our carbon footprint.

Pulp & Paper

Canfor is a leading global supplier of pulp and paper products, with four mills in British Columbia – three in Prince George and one in Taylor.

British Columbia’s northern forests produce some of the finest trees and fibre available for pulp and paper. The climate encourages slow growth of white spruce, lodgepole pine and alpine fir trees that produce long, slender, flexible and strong cellulose fibres. Our pulp is known for its superior strength and quality, and we are continuously improving our environmental and operational performance.

Most of our production is northern bleached softwood kraft (NBSK) pulp but we also produce specialty unbleached and bleached chemo-thermo mechanical pulp. Our pulp mills are true bio-refineries – we produce quality pulp and paper products and we generate green energy for our own operations and for sale to consumers, minimizing waste and ecological impact.

Pulp Mill Operations

Eco-efficiency and the kraft process

1

Wood Chips

70% of the wood chips for our pulp operations come from our sawmill operations in northern British Columbia. The rest are purchased from local suppliers.

2

Cooking

Chips are cooked in large tanks called digesters. A combination of chemicals, heat and pressure dissolve as much lignin as possible while keeping the fibres containing cellulose as long, unbroken and strong as possible.

Mechanical pulp production uses mechanical stressing and heat instead of chemicals. Chemi-mechanical uses a short chemical treatment followed by mechanical pulp production. The kraft process uses a mixture of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide to break the bonds that link the lignin to the cellulose.

The chips are cooked in a large digester. In the sulphate method, the chips are cooked in liquor, an alkaline chemical solution. The cooked pulp is then washed and knots and other debris are separated from the fibers.

3

Screening/Washing

The pulp is separated from incompletely cooked wood chips, dirt and other debris through screens and centrifugal cleaning. The rejected wood chips are reprocessed.

4

Bleaching

The cooked pulp is brown so it may be bleached to make it brighter and cleaner. Our mills use chlorine dioxide, oxygen and hydrogen peroxide, resulting in environmentally superior ECF (elemental chlorine free) pulp.

5

Pressing/Drying

The pulp is converted into sheets, and the water is drained through a combination of gravity and suction. The sheets pass through presses that squeeze out more water before going to a dryer where steam-headed air jets reduce the water content to less than 10%.

6

Bales

The sheets are cooled, cut into smaller sheets and baled before being wrapped and shipped to customers.

Energy Production

We use virtually 100% of our wood fibre to create useful products. The residuals from our lumber operations become a source of fibre for our pulp mills, are used to heat our sawmills or are turned into pellets that are exported as a green fuel source.

Canfor Pulp is one of the largest single producers of bioenergy in North America. Our modern kraft pulp mills operate as a large-scale bio-refinery, and we are near to reaching our goal of becoming energy self-sufficient and exporting surplus power to the electricity grid. We generate over 910,000 MWh of electricity a year – enough to power a city the size of Prince George.

Pulp Mills

We continue to pursue a number of projects that will improve the environmental performance and/or energy efficiency of our pulp mills. We reduced fossil fuel use by 70% in the last 15 years so greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time low.

Since 2012, we have realized substantial benefits from capital investments, including more renewable energy, lower heat losses and fewer emissions. Our processes are more eco-efficient, and our goal is to develop enough capacity to become energy self-sufficient.

Our pulp mills separate fibres and use the non-fibrous components as fuel, minimizing waste and the ecological impact. We use steam generated in our boilers to generate electricity and heat for our operations, and we export surplus power to the grid for other users.

The recovery and utilization of the black liquor produced in the pulping process is an essential part of the pulp production process. Half of the wood raw material is utilized as chemical pulp fiber. The other half is utilized as fuel for electricity and heat generation.

Sawmills

Our thermal heat energy systems use bark and, in some cases, planer shavings to dry lumber and heat our mills. By creating energy from manufacturing by-products, we reduce or eliminate our reliance on natural gas, decrease our greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, reduce our mill conversion costs, and improve wood fibre utilization.

Six of our mills – Fort St. John, Prince George, Plateau, Chetwynd, Radium, and Elko – have been upgraded to improve utilization of wood residuals and reduce the use of natural gas as an energy source. Our Green Energy biomass cogeneration facility in Grande Prairie produces 105,000 MWH of renewable electricity and 200,000 GJ of heat for our sawmill, and sells renewable electricity to the Alberta grid.

Pellets

By converting sawmill residues into sustainable wood pellets we are able to reduce waste and create a green energy source. The industrial grade fuel pellets produced at our pellet facilities provide clean biomass energy to customers in Europe, North America and Asia.

Forest Management

Independent third-party certification of our forest management activities provides customers and stakeholders with assurance of sustainability.

Transportation

Our performance supply chain management and logistics support provides second-to-none service to valued customers in North America and offshore.

We move our products to North American customers by rail and truck, and ship products from Western Canada to offshore markets through the ports in Vancouver or Prince Rupert.

We sell Southern Yellow Pine products primarily in the U.S. market. Our trucking division, New South Express, is located in Myrtle Beach, SC, and moves product in the U.S. Southeast. Our operations in Alabama export products to the Caribbean through the Port of Mobile.

Canfor Pulp Innovation

We know the value of research and development to meet the needs of our customers. We have been actively engaged in pulp and paper research, development and innovation for
17 years, and we collaborate with Canadian research organizations and universities. Our TEMAP website is an open resource with comprehensive fibre intelligence, including the most up-to-date pulp and paper insight and information from in-house, consultative and external experts.

Fibre Supply

Canfor’s Western Canadian operations source wood fibre primarily through long-term replaceable tenure agreements on publicly-owned land. We have Western Canada’s largest supply of green softwood fibre, making us North America’s leading producer of high-quality SPF dimension lumber. Canfor Southern Pine operations in the southern United States do not manage any forestland directly and instead source fibre from neighbouring private forest landowners. Wherever we operate, we demonstrate our commitment to sustainable forestry.

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