Weyerhaeuser
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- This article is about an American company. For the village by this name, see Weyerhaeuser, Wisconsin.
Weyerhaeuser (NYSE: [WY]
It is the third largest owner in the United States, behind Plum Creek Timber and International Paper. Weyerhaeuser has approximately 55,200 employees in 18 countries (primarily in the U.S. and Canada).
Corporate history
| Financial Information
| |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | |
| Net Sales (US$M) | 22,629 | 21,931 | 19,873 | 18,521 | 14,545 |
| Net Earnings (Loss) (US$M) | 733 | 1283 | 277 | 241 | 354 |
In the late 1990s, the company consolidated its core businesses and exited its long held interests in mortgage banking, personal care products, financial services, and information systems consulting. Weyerhaeuser also made expansions into South America, Australia, and the rest of Asia.
In 1999 Weyerhaeuser purchased MacMillan Bloedel Limited, a large Canadian forestry company.
Current operations
Weyerhaeuser now has timber operations or offices in 44 American states, Canada, and 18 other nations. It imports timber products from Malaysia, Chile, and Brazil. In North America, Weyerhaeuser is one of the largest distributors of wood products. The company owns over seven million acres (28,000 km²) of land in the U.S., and owns or holds logging rights to more than 35 million acres (142,000 km²) of land in Canada. Weyerhaeuser has diversified widely beyond its roots in lumber and wood products, and today controls a vast network of over 100 subsidiaries in fields including construction, real estate sales and development (often on its cutover lands).The company's operations are now divided into five major business segments:
- Timberlands — Grows and harvests trees in renewable cycles.
- Wood Products — Manufactures and distributes building materials for homes and other structures.
- Pulp and Paper — Produces a variety of papers, and the pulp to produce papers, absorbent products and for specialty uses such as photographic film.
- Containerboard Packaging and Recycling — Produces paper, boxes and bags to move products from factory to store to consumer. Collects and recycles wastepaper, boxes and newsprint to make new products.
- Real Estate — Builds single- and multi-family homes and develops land.
Corporate governance
Current members of the board of directors of Weyerhaeuser are: Richard Haskayne, Robert Herbold, Martha Rivers Ingram, John Kieckhefer, Arnold Langbo, Don Mazankowski, Nicole Piasecki, Steven Rogel, Richard Sinkfield, D. Michael Steuert, James Sullivan, and Charles Williamson.Criticism
There have been some activists who have complained about company policies ranging from clear-cut logging to conversion of native forests to tree plantations devoid of biodiversity and mill closures among others.Environmental concerns
Weyerhaeuser is North America’s top logger and distributor of forest products from old growth and endangered forests. More than four hundred global companies have already dissociated themselves from endangered forest destruction, including American forest products company Boise Cascade Corporation. Unlike the other leading businesses, Weyerhaeuser ignores evolving demands from its customers and refuses to respond to the crisis facing the world’s forests.
Weyerhaeuser has made many claims that their operations are “green” however facts tell a different story. More than 128,000 square kilometers (50,000 mile²) of Canadian public lands lay open to Weyerhaeuser’s environmentally destructive practices. Weyerhaeuser logs on lands as ecologically varied as the temperate rainforests of the Canadian Coat on Vancouver Island, to pine forests in the interior of British Columbia, to the slow-growing boreal forest stretching across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario, and to the maritime forests of New Brunswick.
One third of Weyerhaeuser’s softwood timber comes solely from Canadian public lands. Each year, 650 square kilometres are felled by Weyerhaeuser’s chainsaws and turned into 2 x 4’s, toilet paper, and packaging mostly for export to the United States.
In 1999, Weyerhaeuser purchased MacMillan Bloedel, a large Canadian timber company that had agreed in 1998 to phase out clear-cut harvesting in British Columbia and pursue a new strategy to conserve old growth and wildlife habitat. However, Weyerhaeuser has not honoured the commitment; its new “variable retention” cutting on the B.C. coast is often indistinguishable from clear-cuts.
In addition, Weyerhaeuser's Kenora, Ontario mill, has been heavily criticized as a toxic pulp and paper mill that is poisoning the people of Grassy Narrows. Band members suffer from toxic levels of mercury released by Weyerhaeuser's mill. For decades, the company's Dryden, Ontario paper mill dumped the poison into the English River, where it accumulated in fish and groundwater.
Since the 1990s, increasing demand from Weyerhaeuser mills have driven accelerated cutting in the forests of Grassy Narrows. If adopted, Abitibi's new harvest plan would permit accelerated cutting through 2024 and cause incalculable damage to the forest and the people of Grassy Narrows.