September 15 was supposed to be the day hundreds of workers at Rayonier Advanced Materials’ Témiscaming complex stopped working. Instead, employees arrived with an unexpected reprieve.
Additional orders from Canadian customers have allowed the Quebec pulp-and-paper operation to postpone its planned economic shutdown until October 3. Roughly 400 unionized employees remain on the job for now, although some reporting has placed the wider number of positions affected at about 425. The extra production buys time, but it does not resolve the problem that triggered the shutdown plan: new U.S. tariffs that RYAM says have made an already difficult business environment economically unsustainable. For a small forestry town built around industrial production, October 3 has now replaced September 15 as the date everyone is watching.
September 15 Arrives Without the Shutdown Workers Feared
The original plan was stark. RYAM announced in late August that it intended to temporarily halt most activity at its Témiscaming industrial complex beginning September 15 for an undetermined period. Roughly 400 unionized workers were expected to be directly affected, along with managers and other employees. Quebec reports put the broader employment impact at approximately 425 positions. The shutdown would have covered almost the entire site, with the wastewater-treatment operation and Boiler No. 4 among the limited facilities expected to continue running.
That timetable changed just days before the shutdown was supposed to begin. Workers were informed that operations could continue until October 3 after the company received several orders from Canadian customers. Unifor welcomed the extension, which effectively gives employees another two-and-a-half weeks of work compared with the original schedule. For families who had been preparing for an indefinite interruption in income, that matters. But the reprieve should not be confused with a cancellation. The temporary economic shutdown remains scheduled unless the commercial picture improves again.
Trump’s 50% Tariffs Changed the Mill’s Economics
RYAM has directly connected its shutdown decision to the latest escalation in the Canada-U.S. trade dispute. Additional U.S. tariffs of 50% on specified Canadian goods took effect August 22 after negotiations between Washington and Ottawa failed to produce an agreement. Unlike many earlier trade measures, the new Section 338 duties can apply even when products otherwise qualify for preferential treatment under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement. That substantially changes the calculation for affected exporters trying to serve American customers.
The scale of a 50% duty is difficult for an industrial manufacturer simply to absorb. It can force some combination of higher customer prices, reduced margins, diverted production or lost orders. RYAM said the tariffs, combined with longer-running challenges in pulp and paper markets, had created conditions in which continuing Témiscaming operations was no longer economically sustainable. Ottawa says the U.S. measures cover C$27.6 billion of Canadian goods. Canada responded with counter-tariffs of 15%, 25% and 50% on a matching C$27.6 billion of U.S. imports beginning September 8, widening the economic consequences in both directions.
The Mill Was Under Pressure Before This Tariff Shock
The tariffs may have triggered the latest shutdown plan, but Témiscaming entered this confrontation with existing vulnerabilities. RYAM indefinitely suspended high-purity cellulose production at the site in July 2024, a move that eliminated roughly 275 positions. The remaining paperboard and high-yield pulp businesses continued operating, but company filings show that those businesses subsequently faced weaker pricing, lower volumes and difficult financial results.
RYAM reported that paperboard net sales declined from US$228 million in 2024 to US$179 million in 2025, while high-yield pulp sales fell from US$127 million to US$112 million. High-yield pulp recorded an operating loss of US$30 million in 2025. Conditions remained challenging in early 2026: first-quarter net sales for the combined paperboard and high-yield pulp business fell 24% from the same period a year earlier, while total sales volume declined 26%. RYAM had also previously told investors that it wanted to restore Témiscaming’s profitability while pursuing a potential divestiture in 2026. The tariff shock therefore landed on an operation already trying to reposition itself.
Canadian Customers Have Bought the Workers More Time
The development that changed September 15 came from much closer to home. Several orders from Canadian customers arrived in recent weeks, according to reporting citing Unifor, giving the mill enough additional business to keep production moving until October 3. In practical terms, domestic demand has created a temporary bridge at precisely the moment access to an important export market has become much more expensive.
That is significant because the remaining Témiscaming operation is not a small production line. RYAM reports annual capacity of about 180,000 metric tonnes of coated paperboard and 290,000 metric tonnes of high-yield pulp at the site. Roughly 60,000 tonnes of that pulp capacity can be consumed internally in paperboard manufacturing. The products ultimately serve packaging, printing, specialty paper and other markets. A few extra Canadian orders cannot replace an export strategy by themselves, but their immediate impact is unusually tangible: production that was expected to stop on September 15 is still running. Every additional order now potentially extends the runway while governments, the union, customers and RYAM search for something more durable.
The Scale of the Threat Is Enormous for Témiscaming
A workforce of approximately 400 may sound modest compared with layoffs at a major urban factory, but Témiscaming is a municipality of only a few thousand residents. Statistics Canada counted 2,368 people in the municipality in the 2021 census. The number of unionized positions facing the shutdown is therefore equivalent to roughly one-sixth of the town’s entire census population—not an employment-rate comparison, but a useful illustration of how unusually large the industrial operation is relative to its community.
The relationship between town and mill runs much deeper than the latest employment numbers. Témiscaming’s municipal history traces the community’s modern development to the arrival of the Riordon Pulp and Paper Company in 1918. The settlement was effectively designed around the industrial operation and the families who worked there. More than a century later, that history makes uncertainty at the mill intensely personal. A production shutdown does not only affect workers passing through the plant gate. It can alter household spending, housing decisions, municipal revenues and whether younger skilled workers decide there is a future for them in the community.
The Economic Damage Would Reach Well Beyond the Plant Gate
The consequences also extend beyond Témiscaming itself. Forestry operations depend on interconnected networks of harvesting contractors, sawmills, residual wood suppliers, trucking firms, maintenance companies and equipment businesses. Unifor has specifically warned that stopping the mill reduces demand throughout that chain. The Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities has similarly raised concern because Témiscaming sits close to the Ontario border and has extensive economic connections with North Bay and northeastern Ontario.
That cross-border regional relationship matters. A mill consumes fibre, chemicals, transportation capacity, mechanical services and countless smaller inputs long before a finished shipment reaches a customer. When production stops, some of those purchases stop or decline with it. FONOM has warned that a prolonged closure could also cause skilled employees to leave the region for work elsewhere, making a future restart harder even if market conditions improve. That is one reason an “indefinite temporary shutdown” can create anxiety far beyond its formal start date. Industrial capacity is difficult to preserve when suppliers lose business and specialized workers begin rebuilding their lives somewhere else.
Governments Had Already Put Money Behind Keeping Témiscaming Competitive
The crisis is especially notable because public efforts to strengthen the operation were already underway. Federal disclosure records show a C$7-million contribution agreement with Rayonier A.M. Canada beginning March 31, 2026, under the Regional Tariff Response Initiative. The project was intended to increase production capacity and productivity while helping maximize the infrastructure and improve the sustainability of the Témiscaming complex. A separate C$162,500 federal agreement was listed for a feasibility study examining ways to maximize the site and strengthen its long-term viability.
Those commitments sit inside a much wider tariff-support strategy. Ottawa announced another C$500 million for the Regional Tariff Response Initiative in May, along with a C$1-billion Business Development Bank of Canada financing program targeting tariff-affected strategic industries. The additional regional funding brought planned national investment through the tariff initiative to C$1.5 billion. Yet Témiscaming demonstrates the limits of adjustment funding when market access changes abruptly. Productivity investments can lower costs and diversification programs can find new customers, but neither immediately erases a 50% duty imposed on exports into a major neighbouring market.
October 3 Is Now the Deadline That Matters
The next critical date is October 3. As things stand, the extra Canadian business allows roughly 400 employees to continue working until then. Provincial officials have said efforts are continuing to identify longer-term solutions, while RYAM has previously said it would work with Unifor, governments and other stakeholders to determine whether conditions could allow operations to continue or eventually restart. No permanent solution has been announced.
The extension nevertheless offers an important lesson about what could change the outcome. The shutdown was postponed not because the underlying tariff disappeared, but because customers supplied enough additional demand to keep the machinery operating longer. That suggests market diversification could form part of any rescue strategy, even if replacing U.S. business on short notice would be extremely difficult. For workers, October 3 is close enough to keep uncertainty painfully immediate. For policymakers, the challenge is broader: turning a few weeks of breathing room into something capable of keeping a century-old industrial community producing after the temporary orders run out.
