The vast majority of Canadian forests – 94% — are publicly owned and subject to stringent land-use regulations designed to sustain multi-value forests resources for the benefit of present and future generations. Like most Canadian forest companies, Millar Western sources the greater part of its fibre, approximately 90%, from these Crown lands.
The Alberta government grants Millar Western access to timber through two tenure systems: land-based tenures called Forest Management Agreements (FMAs), which provide rights to timber in a specific area and entail long-term management responsibilities, and volume-based quotas, which provide rights to a certain amount of timber, usually from another company’s FMA area.
As shown in the map below, we obtain our timber from our own FMA area and from quotas located in the FMAs of the following forest companies: ANC Timber Ltd., Blue Ridge Lumber Ltd., Weyerhaeuser Company Ltd., Slave Lake Pulp Ltd. and Blue Ridge Lumber Ltd. Additional fibre requirements are met through fibre exchange agreements with other forest companies and open-market purchases.
All timber for our operations is harvested in Alberta, Canada, within 175 kilometres of our mills, and certified under two chain-of-custody standards: PEFC and FSC.
Millar Western Fibre Sources – Map