Chapleau's sawmill has officially changed hands.
Rayonier Advanced Materials and GreenFirst Forest Products say they've completed the sale of Rayonier's forest and paper product assets for an aggregate price of about $234-million US: $193-million in cash, about $34-million in common shares in the capital of GreenFirst, and $7.9-million Canadian paid through the issuance of a chip offset credit note.
The deal includes Rayonier's Chapleau, Cochrane, Hearst, and Kapuskasing lumber mills - plus two in Quebec - as well as its newsprint mill in Kapuskasing - and the companies note - collectively - the mills rank as a top ten lumber producer in Canada.
GreenFirst's also bought the rights to about 3.29-million cubic metres of guaranteed fibre supply in Ontario and Quebec, and agreed to a twenty-year chip supply agreement with Rayonier.
GreenFirst CEO Rick Doman says the Vancouver-based company's management team has "developed a plan which [they] believe will allow [them] to significantly reduce cash costs and potentially increase lumber capacity", intending to "make improvements to the mills' management structure, sales processes, and supply chains" to "generate meaningful operational improvements", though the plans have not been outlined.