Muskrat Falls Project Whole Logs Sold to Chinese Buyer – Left Over Fiber to be Chipped and Shipped to UK

The estimated 400,000 cubic meters of timber cut between 2013 and 2015 to make way for the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric station in Labrador, Canada, has been sitting there idle ever since. However, that wood will soon be on its way to China. A deal was completed last summer by JP Forestry, a company that specializes in wood chips, and the Innu Nation to sell off timber leftover from the Muskrat Falls project. The wood was originally to be chipped and shipped to Europe, but JP Forestry has reached a new agreement to sell a majority of the whole timber to a Chinese company. According to Greg Penney, CEO of JP Forestry, although the trees were cut many years ago, they remain in good shape, because the area is frozen typically 8 out of 12 months in a year. Penney went onto say “We have to trim them to size, so there’s going to be a lot of leftover, and there’s going to be a lot of wood not suitable for that market.” Anything that doesn’t meet their standard will be chipped, along with the wood trimmed from the logs. That material will be shipped to another buyer in the UK. “There won’t be any wastage whatsoever,” Penney said. Penney estimates that the Muskrat wood alone will take the entire summer to process and expects that it will be a round-the-clock hauling of timber from their sites to the docks in Goose Bay. The first shipment of that timber is due out at the end of May.