Award Recognizes Domtar’s 2024 Sustainability Report

Domtar’s 2024 Sustainability Report was recognized in Finance Montreal’s 2025 Best Sustainability Report Competition. Our report earned third place in the Natural Resources category. The recognition reflects the strength of our collective work and sustainability achievements.  

Since 2019, the annual competition has given university students from McGill University in various programs, including finance and accounting, the opportunity to analyze the sustainability reports of Canadian companies. Students use a structured evaluation grid to analyze entries from a variety of sectors and assess elements such as financial integration, third-party assurance and performance across environmental, social and governance criteria.  

Students from McGill University evaluated more than 100 reports from companies in the natural resources sector. Domtar’s 2024 Sustainability Report stood out for its: 

• Clear timelines and well-structured strategic roadmap, with a defined pathway toward 2030 that aligns stated objectives with ongoing sustainability achievements. 

• Precise translation of commitments into concrete actions for achieving those objectives. 

• Concise content that is readable, intuitive to navigate and purposeful without being unnecessarily complex or simplified.  

“This recognition reflects the strength, discipline and clarity of our approach to sustainability,” says Arianne LaBoissonniere, manager, sustainability reporting & disclosure. “It validates not only the quality of our reporting but also the credibility of our strategy, where clear objectives, defined timelines and concrete actions are fully aligned. Being evaluated through a rigorous, independent, academic lens reinforces that our work is both relevant and impactful, and it positions Domtar as a company that delivers transparency with purpose.” 

Strategy Drives Sustainability Achievements  

Domtar’s sustainability achievements implement strategy to create real, measurable results in a variety of areas, including energy consumption, water usage and even environmental factors such as noise and dust. Take a look at three projects that demonstrate how employees working at Domtar mills help the company achieve its sustainability goals:  

Saint-Félicien Sawmill 

When our sawmill in Saint-Félicien, Quebec, was built in 1950, there were no houses nearby. But today, the busy site has 70 direct neighbors. who are exposed to noise and dust during the 80 hours that the mill operates every week. 

Over the years, the sawmill has taken steps to reduce the noise and dust, such as cleaning up debris, spreading anti-dust material and planting cedar hedges. But a novel “air-dry” solution has done more than please the neighbors; it’s also led to cost reduction and improved product quality.  

Team members put up walls of stacked wood bundles around the sawmill’s perimeter. The wood bundles successfully reduce noise by 10 decibels and control dust. Stacking the wood bundles outside has the added benefit of air-drying the material prior to processing, which can improve product quality and productivity while saving approximately CAD$1.2 million annually. 

Windsor Mill 

Our Windsor, Quebec, mill has a long history of sustainability achievements, which culminated in earning ISO 50001 certification in 2025. The international ISO 50001 standard recognizes organizations for improving energy used through the development of an energy management system.  

Windsor Mill has committed to reducing its energy usage by 2 percent, saving enough energy to power 2,000 homes each year. To achieve that goal, the team conducted an energy analysis and worked with experts to develop an energy model of the mill. Then they created dashboards that make it possible for management and operators to determine, in real time, whether mill systems are meeting their target energy consumption. 

“We know we will exceed this goal because we have already achieved significant reductions, but we must maintain our efforts. Now that people are aware of our energy consumption, they are working hard to reduce it,” says Eric Olivier, Windsor Mill’s environmental process and sustainability manager. 

Plymouth Mill 

In 2019, our Plymouth, North Carolina, mill installed a large cooling tower, which eliminated its once-through cooling needs and uses waste heat to control the temperature of the water that goes back out to the mill. 

Then, in 2023 and 2024, the mill completed three capital expenditure projects that are collectively saving 18,000,000 gallons of water per day (about 27 Olympic‑size swimming pools) One project replaced fresh water with recycled water already used elsewhere in the mill; another reused that same water in the fiber process instead of adding new fresh water; and a third added a return line that allowed the mill to shut down a mechanical chiller. 

“When you look at water reduction, you have to look at it holistically; saving water can also mean saving energy,” says Kari Cahoon, environmental manager at Plymouth Mill. “We formed a water reduction team that includes members from different departments, and we have regular meetings where we look at our goals and keep ideas flowing.” 

Explore our 2024 sustainability report and look for our 2025 sustainability report, coming this summer.