West Fraser Completes Sale of Quesnel River and Slave Lake Pulp Mills

On April 20, 2024, West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. (TSX and NYSE: WFG) (“West Fraser”) completed its previously announced agreement to sell its Quesnel River Pulp mill (“Quesnel”) in British Columbia and its Slave Lake Pulp mill (“Slave Lake”) in Alberta to Atlas Holdings (“Atlas”).

With the disposition of Quesnel and Slave Lake and the sale of Hinton pulp mill completed in February 2023, West Fraser has refocused its operations to its core solid wood business of lumber, oriented strand board (“OSB”) and panels. Upon closing, the two pulp mills will be operated by Millar Western Forest Products (“Millar Western”), a subsidiary of Atlas.

West Fraser is a diversified wood products company with more than 60 facilities in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe. West Fraser’s products are used in home construction, repair and remodeling, industrial applications, papers, tissue, and box materials.

McMillan acted as legal advisors to West Fraser on this transaction, providing corporate and regulatory expertise on the sale to achieve a successful outcome for our client. Tom Theodorakis led our national multidisciplinary team with support from Sandra Knower, Joanna Dawson, Michael Taylor, Mitchell Allison, Julia Loney, Joshua Krane, Peter Hagel, Gurp Dhaliwal, Jacob Stucken, Spencer Klug, Gray Morfopoulos, Jamie Virgin, Paul Boshyk, Lily Le, Lyndie Charlton and Claire Wanhella (articling student).

As a national business law firm with exceptional capabilities to lead businesses through cross-border transactions and investments into Canada, McMillan provides real-time business solutions to clients operating in multifaceted regulatory regimes. Our legal teams are skilled at structuring and closing complex deals of all shapes and sizes in Canada, the US and internationally and in providing innovative transactional advice. Our understanding of business imperatives and our relationships with the regulators helps our clients stay ahead.