Western Forest Products said increased log and lumber sales coupled with lower manufacturing costs helped the Canadian company increase second quarter earnings three-fold to C$21.1m.
However, Vancouver-based Ainsworth posted an operating loss of C$37.8m during the same period. Low OSB prices, in combination with reduced shipment volumes due to production curtailments, were the primary reason for the decline, it said.
The second quarter saw some im-provement in the benchmark OSB prices, but these remained substantially lower than in the second quarter of 2006 at US$156 per million ft2 down from US$238 per million ft2 a year before.
