The seemingly never-ending price rise (I continue to say the bubble will burst, it is the timing we don’t know) in natural gas and fuel oil continue to take their toll and expose poor strategic planners. Some of the latest victims include Katahdin in Maine, USA, and Schweitzer-Mauduit’s Brazilian coated paper operations, among others. One can survive with a natural gas or fuel oil boiler if they did a proper job of hedging prices on an on-going basis several years ago. However, it is probably too late to start now.

Of course, the best solution, and again, too late for those with shallow pockets, is to have switched to wood residuals (read: chips or sawdust) or non-exotic biomass (read: proven technology) sometime in the past. Strategic planning is important, isn’t it?