After much deliberation, the Canfor board decided to open a new, more efficient facility in Houston. The proposed new facility will operate at two-thirds the capacity of the previous mill.

Canfor is a Canadian company that manufactures wood products with locations across North America. In January of 2023, the Canfor sawmill in Houston announced it would close down operations in April, putting 300 people out of jobs and asking them to wait while the board members could decide if it was financially feasible to demolish and rebuild a new facility or if they would decide to shutdown the facility completely.

In July of 2023, the decision was supposed to have been made by the board, but CICK News spoke with Canfor representative Michelle Ward at that time as to why they had not made a decision yet. In an interview with CICK News, Ward cited needing "the right fiber supply" as a major factor in the decision. BC's wood fiber supply has dwindled after the pine beetle wood flooded the mills across the province. Now that it has all but been harvested, the future of forestry harvesting is a little uncertain.

Michelle Ward outlined the reasons for the new facility. "It's going to be a facility that has a lot more manufacturing flexibility to adjust the products that are being produced to really align with what's in demand in the market," she told CICK News. "It will be a lot more efficient, which essentially at the end of the day means that it won't cost us as much to manufacture at that facility. So that when we go through some of the down periods in the market, our hope would be that this new facility will be able to a little more easily survive and, and run through some of the market fluctuations."

Demolition is slated to happen in the spring of 2024 with construction beginning shortly after that.

Listen to CICK's interview with Michelle Ward here.