International Pulp Week brought together global market pulp leaders for two days of presentations, market intelligence, and industry dialogue hosted by the Pulp and Paper Products Council. Tim Brown, vice president with PPPC opens and introduced the program before before handing the sessions to day one speaker and moderator Kevin Mason of ERA Forest Products Research, and day two moderator Kelly McNamara of Numera Analytics. Now in its 21st year, IPW remains the premier annual gathering for the market pulp sector — drawing producers, end-users, analysts, and suppliers from across the value chain for a concentrated look at the forces shaping global markets. This year’s program covered an unusually wide range of territory, from geopolitics and macroeconomics to fibre performance, specialty cellulose, bleaching chemicals, carbon capture, and a comprehensive market outlook. For those who missed Tree Frog’s coverage, here are all of our summarized stories.
Day One – April 9, 2026
- The Shifting Landscape with Kevin Mason, ERA Forest Products Research
- A Macro View on Tariffs and Global Markets with Joaquín Kritz Lara, Numera Analytics
- Optimizing Fibre, Elevating Performance with Rodrigo Marchi, Suzano
- Specialty Cellulose: Market Dynamics & Outlook with Christian Chavassieu, CelCo
- Carbon Capture in Pulp & Paper: Monetizing Biogenic CO2 with Jouni Martiskainen, Svante
Day Three – April 10, 2026
- Northern Softwood in TAD Tissue with Ismo Nousiainen, Metsä Fibre
- Global Trends in Bleaching & Pulping with Craig Murphy, Chemical Market Analytics by OPIS
- Making the Right Fibre Choices with Aki Temmes, UPM Fibres
- Tissue and Other End-Uses with Mathieu Wener, Numera Analytics
- China and Asia in Focus with Li Meng, Pulp & Paper Products Council
- Global Pulp Markets: Review and Outlook with Emanuele Bona, Pulp & Paper Products Council
Key takeaways from Vancouver include:
The 2026 program confronted an unusually turbulent global backdrop — the closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the outbreak of conflict in Iran, escalating US trade policy uncertainty, and a global pulp market navigating the dual pressures of Latin American capacity expansion and China’s accelerating shift toward domestic self-sufficiency. Eleven speakers across two days addressed the forces reshaping the industry, from macroeconomics and fibre performance to specialty markets, chemical supply security, carbon capture, and a comprehensive market outlook. …
Derek Nighbor, President and CEO of the Forest Products Association of Canada, appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on International Trade to outline the promise and complexity of growing Canadian forest sector exports to Japan — and to make a pointed case for sustained federal investment to make it happen. Canada currently ships roughly $1 billion annually to Japan, a figure Nighbor put in context: it reflects a century of Canadian forestry trade there and 50 years of work by the Canada Wood Group. “It’s a heavy lift,” he said. Against nearly $8 billion in annual softwood lumber exports to the United States — now facing combined duties and Section 232 tariffs in the 45% range — Japan is a real but incremental diversification opportunity. Canada holds 65% of Japan’s 2×4 dimension lumber market, built by actively developing a wood-building culture where one didn’t naturally exist. Holding and growing that share, Nighbor told the committee, requires sustained technical engagement on codes, standards, and the platform frame system — not simply shipping more product. He also flagged headwinds: declining Japanese housing starts, growing domestic Japanese lumber supply, aggressive European entry across lumber, pulp, and pellets, and tightening Japanese sustainability and traceability requirements.
The highly anticipated summit between US President Trump and his Chinese host Xi Jinping has begun – and Europe is watching from a distance. Yet, whatever the outcome is, there is little Brussels can be optimistic about. For Europe, the Trump-Xi summit is not just about US-China relations. It’s about whether the European Union ends up squeezed between two superpowers cutting tactical deals over trade, technology, energy and security – while European interests are treated as secondary (if at all). In fact, Europe might be watching the summit from a lose-lose position. The most immediate concern in Brussels and Berlin is probably nothing less than industrial survival – and it comes in the form of rare earths. …European officials fear a US-China arrangement could prioritize American access to Chinese rare earths while Europe remains vulnerable to shortages and export restrictions — effectively making it collateral damage.
AUSTRALIA — Timber NSW, the industry body representing the NSW hardwood industry, 
NEW YORK — Mercer reported first quarter 2026 Operating EBITDA of $7.8 million, a decrease from $47.1 million in the same quarter of 2025 and an increase from negative $20.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. In the first quarter of 2026, net loss was $52.0 million compared to $22.3 million in the same quarter of 2025 and $308.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. Mr. Juan Carlos Bueno, CEO, stated: “Our pulp sales realizations showed resilience this quarter as softwood pulp markets held steady, while hardwood pulp performance trended upward on favorable demand-supply dynamics. However, elevated fiber costs across our supply chain and a slower-than-anticipated recovery in prices continued to weigh on our results. …Mass timber momentum continues to build, backed by an order book and commitments of $171 million that support a multi-year production plan. …European softwood pulp prices increased compared to the fourth quarter of 2025 due to supply constraints, although these gains were offset by higher discounts.
VANCOUVER, BC — West Fraser Timber reported the first quarter results of 2026. First quarter sales were $1.334 billion, compared to $1.165 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025. First quarter earnings were $(188) million, compared to earnings of $(751) million in the fourth quarter of 2025. First quarter Adjusted EBITDA was $(66) million compared to $(79) million in the fourth quarter of 2025. Included in first quarter Adjusted EBITDA in the Lumber segment is ($114) million of duty adjustments related to prior periods compared to nil in the fourth quarter of 2025. …North America Engineered Wood Products segment Adjusted EBITDA of $11 million, and Europe Engineered Wood Products segment Adjusted EBITDA of $10 million. …Sean McLaren, West Fraser’s President and CEO said “Excluding the impact of prior year duty adjustments, we were pleased to see all of our core segments – lumber, NA EWP, and Europe EWP – report positive Adjusted EBITDA.” 
Sumitomo Forestry’s $4.5 billion Tri Pointe buyout was approved with more than 99% support, taking the combined Japanese-owned share of US single-family home construction from just 0.2 per cent in 2015 to close to 6 per cent in 2026. Sumitomo Forestry’s buyout of Tri Pointe Homes, one of California’s largest builders, was approved at a special meeting in Irvine, California, earlier this month, with the deal set to be completed by mid-year. The Tri Pointe transaction, first announced in February, is the largest US homebuilder acquisition by a Japanese forest-based conglomerate in history, and follows the same playbook Sumitomo has already run across Australia, where Japanese conglomerates wholly or partly own just under 30 per cent of the country’s top 20 housebuilders. …Tri Pointe gives the Tokyo-listed parent access to California and Nevada, the two major US growth states where Sumitomo… had no meaningful presence. 
WASHINGTON — The Intertribal Timber Council (ITC) expressed deep disappointment following the European Commission’s release of its EUDR simplification review, saying the package offers no meaningful relief for Indigenous Tribal Nations and leaves major concerns raised by Tribal forest managers unresolved. Despite months of engagement from Tribal representatives and repeated warnings about unintended impacts on Indigenous communities, the Commission declined to reopen the regulation and instead proposed only limited technical adjustments through implementing acts, FAQs, and guidance documents. As a result, compliance obligations affecting Tribal Nations in low-risk countries remain fundamentally unchanged. …US Tribal Nations manage 7.8 million hectares of forestland under sovereign governance systems. …The ITC is calling on the European Commission to recognize Tribal forests in the United States as low-risk, legally protected systems.
Brazil’s Atlantic forest, the country’s most threatened biome, last year recorded its lowest level of deforestation since monitoring began 40 years ago, a new report shows. The forest is Brazil’s most populous biome, and home to 80% of the population and major cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. In 2025 it recorded 8,658 hectares of deforestation, marking the first time it has fallen below 10,000 hectares since 1985. Environmentalists have welcomed the results, which they say could even lead to “zero deforestation” in the Atlantic forest within just a few years, but warned of potential risks that could reverse the downward trend of recent years. One is the recent approval of the so-called “devastation bill” in Brazil’s congress that drastically weakens environmental law. The other is the prospect of a far-right government, opposed to environmental protection policies, returning to power in the October presidential election…
UK — The significant decline in the number of trees produced by Britain’s nurseries provides a “stark illustration” of the sector’s ‘falling’ confidence, an industry leader has said. Around 139 million trees were grown in the UK’s private and public nurseries across 2025/26, a sharp fall on previous years. In both 2024/25 and 2023/24, nurseries grew slightly over 160 million trees, with 2022/23 totalling slightly under 152 million. This means the total number of trees produced fell by around 14% between 2024/25 and 2025/26. …The findings were contained with the Forestry Commission’s new Tree Supply report – published in late April – which pointed to reduced planting expectations in Scotland as being a major cause of the decline. Stuart Goodall, chief executive at industry body Confor, said: “the report provides a stark illustration of the concerns that have been raised for a number of years – government targets for tree planting are not being met and this is affecting confidence and business activity in the sector.
For the last few decades, the working assumption in European fire management was geographic: the real threat lives at lower elevations. In countries like Greece, Portugal, and Spain, the threat was tied to parched lowlands, flammable scrub, and summer drought. The Alps, Pyrenees, and Carpathians sat above the areas at risk, written off as too cold and wet to carry serious fires. A 25-year satellite record now challenges that assumption. Tracking fires across eight European mountain ranges, researchers found flames climbing the slopes at a steady rate — and the pace has picked up sharply since 2015. A team led by Dr. Mirela Beloiu, an ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), tracked wildfires across eight European mountain regions from 2000 to 2025. The pattern was hard to miss. Fires are climbing the slopes at roughly 236 feet per decade, finding fuel in stands that almost never burned before.
Russian timber and cellulose exports have collapsed by 50% between 2021 and 2025, the steepest fall of any sector tracked by NATO-frontline intelligence across four years of Western sanctions, with the same Latvian assessment revealing that sanctions have cost Moscow more than US$130 billion as it scrambled to source banned goods between 2022 and 2025. That is according to a new analysis published in April by the Constitution Protection Bureau (SAB), one of Latvia’s three security intelligence services, drawing on internal Russian institutional forecasts obtained through intelligence collection alongside SAB’s own assessment. Russia was the world’s largest softwood lumber exporter in 2021, ahead of its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. …According to the analysis, Russia paid an additional US$32.5 billion each year to acquire sanctioned Western goods through intermediaries at inflated prices, excluding cases where no substitute was available. 
Commission attempts to retrospectively curb “rampant bureaucracy” in the EUDR are “inadequate”, according to the German Sawmill and Timber Industry Association (DeSH). DeSH says the new simplification package for the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) falls far short of the goal of genuine simplification and continues to create uncertainty rather than clarity in practice. Instead of solving structural problems, DeSH says the Commission is attempting to retrospectively curb the rampant bureaucracy with ever-new guidelines, FAQs, and exemptions. …Ms Möbus says the goal of the EUDR – to combat global deforestation – is correct and important. “However, the EU has taken a wrong turn on the way there. The regulation has developed into a bureaucratic behemoth that poses enormous challenges for the companies affected.” …“The association call for a significant reduction in bureaucratic requirements, practical solutions for implementation in the supply chain, and genuine risk-based approaches that adequately consider regions without deforestation risk.”
Our warming world is set to enter an 
Many US pellet exporters are evaluating new potential markets abroad to diversify their portfolios and adjust to evolving policy landscapes. At the same time, other countries around the world are increasing production and use of wood pellets as a coal replacement for power generation, as well as renewable heating option for residential heating systems and industrial utilization. From Vietnam to smaller markets such as Poland, global wood pellet production continues to grow. …US manufacturers produced over 11 million tons of wood pellets in 2025, including premium and utility pellets. A majority of that volume was exported—an estimated total of 9.37 million tons last year. Globally, pellet producers are experiencing a tug of war between increased biomass use due to decarbonization efforts and increased scrutiny from programs such as the European Union Deforestation Regulation and other countries’ evolving policy mechanisms. …Finding new substantial markets for US pellets may prove to be a challenge. 
LONDON and SAN FRANCISCO – Octopus Energy Generation, one of Europe’s leading renewables investors, is ramping up efforts to slash CO₂ pollution at scale – inking a major US deal that will help remove up to 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air. Octopus’s fund management team is set to invest $500 million in afforestation and reforestation projects in the US developed by public benefit and climate technology company Living Carbon. On top of that, Octopus has put nearly $13 million into Living Carbon’s fast-growing, cutting-edge carbon removal development business. …Across the US, roughly 130 million acres of land lie degraded and could be reforested. …The locations include old mining sites and worn-out farmland, transforming these spaces into CO₂-absorbing sinks that slash emissions and combat climate change. These projects will also have a host of additional benefits: restoring wildlife habitats, improving water quality, strengthening soils, and supporting local economies in rural communities.
Finland’s economy has long been rooted in its forests—but in 2026, the sector sits at the intersection of energy transition, environmental regulation, and global market uncertainty. A glance at Finland’s real-time energy production reveals a system increasingly diversified across nuclear, hydro, and renewables. Yet beneath this transition lies a quieter but equally critical story: the evolving role of forestry in powering both industry and energy systems. Finland’s energy picture depends heavily on whether we look at electricity output or total primary energy consumption. …The broader energy balance tells a different story. When heat, fuels, and industrial energy are included, bioenergy remains Finland’s largest energy source, at roughly 135 TWh, ahead of nuclear energy at about 105 TWh. Oil remains significant at around 70 TWh, while hydro and wind contribute roughly 25 TWh and 20 TWh, respectively. This matters for forestry because forest-based energy remains central to Finland’s energy system, even as its role is slowly declining.
