| Former type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Forestry Pulp and paper |
| Fate | Takeover |
| Successor | Weyerhaeuser |
| Founded | 1908 (as Powell River Company) |
| Defunct | 1999 |
| Headquarters | Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
MacMillan Bloedel Limited, sometimes referred to as "MacBlo", was a Canadian forestry company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was formed through the merger of three smaller forestry companies in 1951 and 1959. Those were the Powell River Company, the Bloedel Stewart Welch Company, and the H.R. MacMillan Company. It was bought by Weyerhaeuser of Federal Way, Washington in 1999.
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In 1908 two American entrepreneurs, Dr. Dwight Brooks and Michael Scanlon, created a newsprint mill at Powell River, northwest of Vancouver. The Powell River Company turned out the first roll of newsprint manufactured in B.C. in 1912. It soon became one of the world’s largest newsprint plants and today is credited with introducing the first self-dumping log barge to B.C.
In 1911 Julius Bloedel, a Seattle lawyer, along with his two partners, John Stewart and Patrick Welch, began acquiring large blocks of Vancouver Island forests. Their Franklin River camp soon became one of the world’s largest logging operations. Here, in the 1930s, the Canadian industry saw its first Lidgerwood steel spar yarder and chainsaw. In 1938, Bloedel, Stewart and Welch became the first logging company in the province to plant seedlings in a logged-over area. BSW opened a large timber mill in Port Alberni. The company had large camps near Menzies Bay, British Columbia, Comox and Myrtle Point, just south of Powell River. The company was headquartered in Vancouver. Stewart and Welch were also partners in Foley, Welch and Stewart, who were prominent in railway-building operations in the same period.
The last of the three pre-merger companies was the H.R. MacMillan Export Company, which was created in 1919 by Harvey, or H.R. MacMillan, British Columbia’s first Chief Forester. MacMillan reportedly gained considerable experience in world lumbering during World War I. With his colleague Whitford Van Dusen, another forester, MacMillan incorporated a company in 1919 to sell B.C. lumber products to foreign markets. In 1924, they established a shipping company that would become one of the world’s biggest charter companies. With the creation of Seaboard Lumber by the other mill owners in BC, there was a major threat to MacMillan as Seaboard was to export all the lumber from the companies that founded it leaving MacMillan without the lumber needed to fulfill their orders. HR responded by beginning to purchase mills and creating the first truly integrated forestry company in BC.
During World War II, MacMillan acquired numerous small mills and timber tenures on the south coast of BC.
In 1951 Bloedel, Stewart and Welch merged with HR MacMillan to form MacMillan Bloedel. The B.S.W and MacMillan had many timber holdings side by side and there was a natural synergy from this merger. B.S.W. held a lot timber resources and MacMillan was the first truly integrated forestry company in BC. The merger in 1951 created a company that would be able to compete on the global scene.
Beginning in the 1960s, MacMillan Bloedel expanded across North America as well as to Europe and the United Kingdom. At its peak, acquisitions and construction activities gave MB worldwide assets of more than $4 billion CAD.
The Brutalist MacMillan Bloedel Building located at Thurlow and Georgia Street in downtown Vancouver was a highlight of the early architectural career of Arthur Erickson, who advocated the use of concrete as "the new marble" and employed it in the building's stark design, which is often compared locally to a concrete waffle.
In 1993, the MacMillan Bloedel company composed an agenda of expanding its logging into new areas and refused to abandon its plans to clearcut a significant portion of the temperate rain forest around Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, in spite of opposition from several organizations. Environmentalists, together with private land owners and native tribes, launched a blockade after discovering that MacMillan Bloedel was logging in one of the most pristine areas around Clayoquot Sound - a clear violation of the recommendations made by top government-chosen scientists. The Science Panel for Sustainable Forest Practices in Clayoquot Sound was formed after 850 people were arrested for blockading MB's logging in Clayoquot in the summer of 1993 - the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. The Science Panel made stringent recommendations which MacMillan Bloedel promised to abide by, a commitment MB used to assure their international newsprint and phone directory paper customers that they should keep buying from the Canadian logging giant. MacMillan Bloedel made a commitment to phase out clearcutting and embrace the variable retention method of harvesting timber, but it has occasionally fallen short of the commitment.
In June 1999, Weyerhaeuser announced its intention to buy MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. of Canada for stock valued at about $2.45 billion USD. The merger once it completed, made Weyerhaeuser, which at that time was already the world's largest producer of softwood lumber and market pulp, a leader in packaging as well.
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