Cariboo Pulp&Paper (CPP), a Canadian pulp company, announced that due to the lack of fiber, the company would cut the pulp production of Quesnel Plant in British Columbia twice in 2023.. The first outage is planned to take place in the middle of April and will last for one month. Then, it will stop production for another month in the third quarter of this year.

CPP is a 50% joint venture of West Fraser Timber Co and Mercer International, which can produce 366000 tons of NBSK pulp annually.

West Fraser and Mercer attributed this decision to the decline in available fiber at the sawmill. “Pests, fires and government policy decisions have all affected the amount of fiber available in the province,” they announced.

Due to the lack of fiber, British Columbia pulp companies are facing serious problems, which have lasted for several months, and have affected pulp production many times in 2022. This difficult situation will continue to exist in 2023, and pulping enterprises can only increase the shutdown time to cope with it.

In the middle of January 2023, Mercer announced that it would suspend the Celgar plant with an annual output of 500000 tons for three weeks in March.

Canfor Pulp cut the output of the Intercontinental NBSK pulp mill with an annual output of 330000 tons by four weeks between mid-December 2022 and mid-January this year. In mid-January, the company also announced the permanent closure of the pulp business of Prince George pulp and paper mill.