Wawa OSB and its parent company, Forex Inc., have filed for creditor protection.
Mayor Melanie Pilon revealed the news early in last night's budget meeting.
Mayor Pilon explained she felt it appropriate to start the meeting with the "very, very serious news", as a reminder for Council of the "macroeconomic factors" to keep in mind during budget deliberations.
Wawa OSB started ramping up plans to convert the former pellet mill back to an oriented strandboard mill last year, with the provincial government last April announcing a conditional grant of $15-million over four years to leverage over $170-million and creating "hundreds of new jobs" and bring the forest sector "back in a big way" to Wawa, and the company claimed last summer the plant should have 140 direct jobs, producing 530,000 cubic metres of OSB at full capacity - it had aimed to open this summer or fall, but the unprecedented peak in OSB and lumber prices in 2021 and early 2022 sharply declined in the latter half of 2022.
International firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has been appointed trustee.