It is a Very Big Deal.

At 10am on Thursday, July 29, at a special virtual meeting, shareholders of Domtar, a giant in the North American pulp and paper industry, will vote on whether to accept the sale of all the corporation’s issued and outstanding shares of common stock to Paper Excellence for US$55.50 per share in an “all-cash transaction” worth about US$3 billion, or CN$3.77 billion.

Paper Excellence is part of the gargantuan and opaque corporate empire of the multi-billionaire Widjaja family of Indonesia. It is also owner of the controversial Northern Pulp mill in Nova Scotia.

If the Domtar acquisition goes through, it will give Paper Excellence control over an additional 12 pulp and paper mills in North America, four of them in Canada, as well as nine “manufacturing and converting facilities” in 15 US states. Domtar has “21 manufacturing facilities located around the world” and 6,400 employees “serving more than 50 countries around the world.”

Domtar corporate offices are currently in Montreal and South Carolina, while Paper Excellence is headquartered in Richmond, BC.

According to Bloomberg, the transaction would “take U.S.-listed Domtar private” and according to the global organization Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) it “would put at its helm a family that’s internationally notorious for both human rights abuses and deforestation.”