Canfor permanently closes Fox Creek sawmill, removing 120M board feet from a weak lumber market. Pine beetle salvage timber is exhausted, U.S. duties remain punishing, and the company will try to place workers at other Alberta mills.
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Canfor Corp. is permanently closing its Fox Creek sawmill in Alberta, pulling 120 million board feet of annual production out of a North American lumber market already squeezed by weak demand and high U.S. duties.
The mill, rebuilt in 2011 after a fire destroyed the original, was designed to process timber from Alberta's mountain pine beetle salvage strategy. That program has ended. Wildfire-damaged wood that kept the mill running in recent years is now largely exhausted. Without a steady fibre supply and with U.S. softwood lumber duties at punishing levels, the operation is no longer viable, the company said Tuesday.
"This is a difficult decision which we know will have a significant impact on our employees, their families, contractors, and the community," said Susan Yurkovich, Canfor's president and chief executive. She cited "prolonged weak market conditions, persistent high US softwood lumber duties and tariffs, and fibre supply impacts" as the reasons.
Fox Creek operated as a single-shift mill. The closure removes roughly 2-3% of Canfor's total North American capacity. Operations are expected to wind down by late summer.
Canfor said it will try to place affected workers at its other Alberta operations, including the Grande Prairie and Whitecourt sawmills and its value-added facilities at Spruceland and the newly acquired PinkWood. The company has operated in the province for more than 70 years.
The closure comes as North American lumber producers face a triple squeeze: weak homebuilding demand, elevated log costs in some regions, and a combined U.S. duty and tariff rate on Canadian softwood that has pushed total landed costs well above domestic U.S. supply. Canfor reported a loss in the first quarter of 2026.
Fox Creek's end as a pine-beetle salvage mill mirrors a broader shift across the Alberta forest industry. The province's decades-long battle with the mountain pine beetle, which killed millions of hectares of pine, generated a massive but temporary timber supply. Mills built or retooled to process that wood now face a fibre cliff as the salvage window closes. Wildfires in 2023 and 2024 accelerated the depletion of available timber in the Fox Creek area, the company said.
Alberta's Ministry of Forestry and Parks had supported the mill with additional fibre allocations to extend its run. With the beetle strategy concluded and the fire-damaged wood cut, the ministry and Canfor agreed there was no path to a sustainable long-term fibre supply.
The decision does not affect Canfor's other Alberta operations. Yurkovich said Canfor remains committed to "pursuing opportunities to strengthen our operations in the province."
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