Pulp, paper and paperboard mills

The pre-screen cut this on capital, and a greenfield kraft mill is indeed beyond any ordinary entrant. But capital is not the honest reason, because the cut survives the capital being solved. What decides it is what a mill earns once you own it. Mercer International runs modern kraft mills in British Columbia, Alberta and Germany, sells into the same global price as everyone else, and in 2025 reported US$1,868.1M of revenue, a net loss of US$497.9M and Operating EBITDA of negative US$22.0M [A]. Inside that loss is a US$203.5M impairment of the Peace River, Alberta mill, taken, in the company's words, on the continued down-cycle in hardwood pulp; it realised US$743 a tonne for softwood kraft and US$549 for hardwood, and expects fibre costs to rise on supply constraints [A]. The mechanism is a squeeze from both sides that the owner controls neither of: the price is set in China and Europe, the wood cost is set by the same shrinking sawmill residual supply that the Sawmill & Wood-Preserving Plant and Value-Added Wood Manufacturing records describe — fewer sawmills running means fewer chips. The product set is not growing to compensate: newsprint and printing papers are in structural decline, and the growing grades, packaging board and tissue, are made by integrated companies that convert their own output. The size bands confirm there is no small end to start in — 67 of 138 establishments employ a hundred or more, and 14 employ over five hundred [A]. Solve the capital and the mill still loses money.