About Wood Business

Wood Business

Overview

Wood Business is the digital media brand for Annex Business Media's Canadian forest industries magazines, published online at woodbusiness.ca. The site's masthead presents it as the home of two long-established print titles, Canadian Forest Industries and Canadian Wood Products, and it carries their combined journalism: daily industry news, feature stories, market reporting and magazine content for the people who harvest, process and sell Canadian wood. Canadian Forest Industries, the flagship, covers logging and solid wood products nationally; Canadian Wood Products is devoted to sawmilling and wood processing. Together with French-language sister title Opérations forestières et de scierie and sister brand Canadian Biomass, they form one of the main trade media groups serving Canada's forest sector, an industry that supports hundreds of communities across the country and whose products, from lumber to mass timber, are central to Canada's economy and trade.

History

The senior title, Canadian Forest Industries, is dated by Annex to 1881, and periodical directories link it to the old Canada Lumberman, making it one of Canada's oldest continuously published trade magazines. Canadian Wood Products is much younger: directory records date it to 1991, and it was launched with the involvement of forestry journalist Scott Jamieson, who became a part owner of the two magazines and their French sister in 1993, when they were published by Forest Communications of Pincourt, Quebec. Annex Business Media acquired all three magazines in 2004, bringing them into what became Canada's largest business-to-business publishing group.

Jamieson, who served as publisher and editor-in-chief of the forestry titles for 17 years and more than 240 issues, moved to Annex's head office in Simcoe in 2009, handing the editor's chair to Bill Tice, his longtime western editor and a veteran of Canfor and West Fraser Timber. Before the Annex sale, the magazines had been published from Pincourt, in the Montreal area, a base that reflected the group's bilingual character: Opérations forestières et de scierie continues to serve Quebec's forest operators in French. Jamieson's standing in the industry extended beyond the titles themselves; in 2017 he was elected chair of Magazines Canada, the national magazine association, for a two-year term. In 2008, working from the forestry group's expertise, Jamieson also launched Canadian Biomass, a quarterly covering the emerging bioenergy sector, initially distributed as a supplement with Canadian Forest Industries and Canadian Wood Products. Jennifer Ellson took over as editor of Canadian Forest Industries in May 2022, and the magazine's current editor is Andrew Snook, who also edits Canadian Biomass and Pulp & Paper Canada and writes the brand's editorials on trade and forest policy. Through these changes, the two magazines' shared website developed into the Wood Business platform that now fronts the group online.

Content and Coverage

Wood Business covers the business of Canadian forestry end to end. Its news reporting follows the issues that dominate the sector in 2026: softwood lumber duties and tariffs in the United States, mill closures and curtailments, lumber prices and housing demand, fibre supply, wildfire recovery, Indigenous partnerships and forestry ventures, and federal and provincial support programs for the sector. Feature coverage is anchored in the mills and the bush: sawmill profiles, harvesting and saw-filing technology, optimization and safety, drying, dust and explosion mitigation, and profiles of logging contractors and forest companies from coast to coast.

The group's franchises include the annual Top 10 Under 40 awards, which recognise young leaders in the forest industry and were still calling for submissions in July 2026, with the 2025 winners profiled on the site that October, and a Women in Forestry content stream profiling women across the sector, still running in 2026. Canadian Forest Industries also organises the OptiSaw series of sawmilling technology conferences, and the Wood Business site carries webinars, product news and videos alongside its articles. Regular magazine elements include the editor's First Cut column, gear and equipment pages, saw-filing technique features — the site ran a saw-filing showcase series in June 2026 — and recurring market reporting, such as its North America softwood lumber market updates, which track prices, duties and demand for Canadian producers selling at home and abroad.

Audience and Reach

The audience is the professional forest industry: logging contractors, sawmill and planer mill managers and owners, wood products manufacturers, equipment and technology suppliers, foresters and industry associations across Canada. Annex's portfolio material states that Canadian Forest Industries publishes six times a year and reaches more than 14,000 qualified subscribers, a publisher-reported figure. A 2013 periodical directory listed Canadian Wood Products, then published bimonthly, with an audited circulation of about 7,069, and Canadian Forest Industries with an audited circulation of about 12,296; both are presented here as dated source figures rather than current measurements. Subscribers can choose print magazine and email newsletter combinations for the group's titles, and the website's daily news file extends the magazines' reach well beyond their print lists.

Digital Presence

Woodbusiness.ca publishes news and features every business day and was carrying current July and August 2026 coverage, including market updates, mill announcements and association statements, when this profile was prepared. The site functions as a same-day wire for the sector, posting statements from bodies such as the Forest Products Association of Canada, the BC Council of Forest Industries and the Ontario Forest Industries Association alongside its own reporting, and it covers the wider wood economy too, from mass timber and wood construction promotion to the pellet industry's annual conference. Current and back issues of Canadian Forest Industries are published as digital editions at magazine.woodbusiness.ca. The brand distributes a regular email newsletter, maintains social media accounts for its magazines, including Canadian Forest Industries' @CFIMag handle, and uses the site to run its awards programs, webinars and event promotion. The digital platform also gives the century-old print titles a daily publishing rhythm that the six-times-a-year print schedule cannot.

Ownership and Organisation

Wood Business and its magazines are published by Annex Business Media, a privately held business-to-business publisher headquartered in Simcoe, Ontario, which became an employee- and management-owned company through a buyout completed in 2024. Annex acquired the forestry magazines in 2004, and Scott Jamieson, their former part owner and longtime publisher, went on to become Annex's chief operating officer and, following the buyout, its chief executive, while retaining a long association with the forestry group. Annex's portfolio lists the forestry titles under a group publisher, with day-to-day editing of Canadian Forest Industries in the hands of editor Andrew Snook. The group sits within Annex's wider agriculture and resources portfolio and alongside sister forestry brands Canadian Biomass, Pulp & Paper Canada and Opérations forestières et de scierie, the French-language magazine for Quebec's forest industry.

Contact and Availability

Wood Business is published by Annex Business Media, 105 Donly Drive South, Simcoe, Ontario, telephone 519-428-3471. Canadian Forest Industries appears in print six times a year and Canadian Wood Products as its sawmilling companion title; both are available to qualified forest industry readers in print and digital editions. The Wood Business website, woodbusiness.ca, is freely accessible and carries the group's daily news, features, digital magazine issues, webinar and awards information. Few Canadian trade media brands can trace a line as long as this one, from an 1881 lumber journal to a daily digital news service for the modern forest industry.