Public | |
Traded as | : UFS : UFS S&P 400 Component |
Industry | Paper & Paper Products |
Headquarters | Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
Key people
|
John D. Williams (CEO) |
Revenue |
|
|
|
|
|
Total assets |
|
Total equity |
|
Number of employees
|
9800 (2014) |
Website | www |
Domtar Corporation is the largest integrated producer of uncoated freesheet paper in North America and the second largest in the world based on production capacity, and is also a manufacturer of papergrade pulp.
The firm designs, manufactures, markets and distributes a wide range of business, commercial printing, publication as well as technical and specialty papers with recognized brands such as Cougar, Lynx Opaque Ultra, Husky Opaque Offset, First Choice, Sandpiper (premium 100% recycled unbleached), and Domtar EarthChoice Office Paper, part of a family of environmentally and socially responsible papers.
Domtar owns and operates Domtar Distribution Group, an extensive network of paper distribution facilities. The company overall employs nearly 10,000 people. Its head office is in Montreal and its operations center is in Fort Mill, South Carolina. After a 2006 merger with US-based Weyerhaeuser, Domtar is not viewed as a Canadian entity and does not qualify for inclusion in Canadian stock indexes.
In 1848, Henry Potter Burt founded Burt, Boulton Holdings Ltd. in England, a company that specialized in treating timber against rot from moisture. The company used substances, such as creosote derived from coal tar, to prolong lumber's useful life, supplying railway ties and pilings for wharves and foundations throughout Europe and the British Empire. Within eleven years Burt, Boulton was exporting to North America and acquired a sawmill in Quebec's Eastern Townships.
In the coal-intensive environment of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was an ever-increasing source of coal tar, and a demand for treated wood. Growth continued for Burt, Boulton Holdings Ltd. and led to the founding of a new company on February 4, 1903. It was called the Dominion Tar and Chemical Company, Limited. Dominion Tar's first plant was located in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and began operations just eight months later.
In 1910, the company obtained two major contracts. The first, from the Canadian Pacific Railway, was to treat railway ties, and the second, with the Lake Superior Iron & Steel Company (a predecessor of Algoma Steel), was to process tar produced from the coke ovens at its Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario mill. This required the financing of two new plants at opposite ends of Eastern Canada. Burt, Boulton retained the majority of shares in the company but took on Senator John S. McLennan from Nova Scotia and Drummond, McCall & Co. of Montreal as the corporation's first Canadian shareholders.