Forest Management

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Forest Resource Management at Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Limited

Wood Supply for Corner Brook Mill

The mill at Corner Brook requires approximately 950,000 cubic meters of wood each year.  While a primary objective of our forest management is to provide a sustainable supply of high quality raw material to the mill at a competitive cost, we must also ensure a sustainable flow of other forest values such as clean water, wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities.

Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Timber Limits

The Company manages over 2 million hectares (5 million acres of forest land on the island of Newfoundland.  These timber limits span the island from the Codroy Valley on the southwest corner of the island to Plum Point on the Northern Peninsula and east to Gander in central Newfoundland.

Of the 2 million hectares of total land area, only 930,000 hectares are forested.  The remainder of the land is bog, barren, water and shrub land.  Of the 930,000 hectares of forest, approximately 750,000 hectares produce timber for the mill.  The rest is in environmental reserves or isolated, steep inaccessible areas.

Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Timber Limits

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WOOD SUPPLY FOR CORNER BROOK MILL

A primary objective of our forest management is to provide a sustainable supply of high quality raw material to the mill at a competitive cost.  Corner Brook Pulp and Paper uses a computer simulation model called FORMAN+1 to analyze the future wood supply for the mill.  This model projects forest growth and depletion based on the current state of the forest, assumptions on the rate of harvest, silviculture treatments, and forest development curves derived from measurements taken in the forest.  While there is no large surplus of wood, our analysis shows that we have a sufficient wood supply to meet the needs of the mill.

Figure 1 shows the projected future growing stock of timber on CBPP timber lands for the next 80 years based on our analysis using the FORMAN+1 wood supply model. This projection assumes that our harvest level meets the current mill demand and that we continue our silviculture program at current levels and schedule our harvest so as to minimize losses of volume from natural mortality in over-mature stands.  Our growing stock (the amount of merchantable volume on our timber limits) will decline from the present 31 million cubic meters to approximately 12.5 million meters over the next 40 years.

Figure 1:

Figure 2 This decline is inevitable and arises from the high proportion of over-mature stands in our forest and the relatively small area of middle aged stands in the 20 - 40 and 40 - 60 year age classes as illustrated in figure 2.

Figure 2:

For more information on Forest Management download section 6 on our FMPOPs page

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