TreeSource Closing Mill, Blaming Canada

SPANAWAY, WA-TreeSource Industries Inc. announced this week that it intends to permanently close its Spanaway sawmill effective August 30, 2002. The Spanaway mill produces 100 million board feet of green Douglas-fir dimension lumber annually and has approximately 120 employees.

The closure of the facility is necessitated by the continued weakness in dimension lumber prices, says TreeSource president Bob Lockwood. “This was not the outcome we desired but with the mill’s benchmark product, green Douglas-fir 2×10′s, continuing to sell at levels not seen in more than ten years despite near record level housing starts, economic circumstances dictate the mill’s closure,” says Lockwood. “The flood of subsidized Canadian lumber in to the U.S. continues to depress lumber prices causing a loss of jobs as U.S. sawmills close.”

Last Friday, the World Trade Organization (WTO) found that U.S. duties on Canadian softwood lumber violate international trade rules and that the United States was wrong in finding that Canadian provincial stumpage programs are subsidies. The final WTO report on Canada’s challenge of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s preliminary determination of subsidy is expected in September.