woodchips

Article by Jill Redwood, in response to the historic agreement which has reportedly been reached to save Tasmania's wild forests. The intention is to move loggers from the old forests into the plantation industry. The Age reported that "Parties to the talks, who all strenuously rejected the involvement of politicians in the negotiations, refused to comment before today's announcement." International markets for woodchips have been down for some time. Victorians might wonder, is the Tasmanian Green movement different from - and more really green - than the one identified with the Victorian "Green Brand" party? (See discussion below "Are the Greens a real alternative?".) Consider also that Environmentalist movements exist outside political parties and that we do not need political parties to make a difference if those parties do not serve us well. The following article is sourced from Jill Redwood. This 'teaser' is from candobetter.org Photos by Sheila Newman

Dot points on Tuesday 19th October 2010 Tasmania agreement announcement and implications for Victoria and beyond

(thanks to Luke for some of these figures).

· Gunns has seen the light and is moving into plantations only.

· Very courageous move by industry to get together with green groups and come to an agreement that helps everyone.

· Victorian industry can also follow suit – govt should help these negotiations along.

· Needed now more than ever – native forests logging is on down-hill run as:

o plantation products dominate the timber market,

o high Aussie dollar (and Asia still recovering from GFC) means export woodchip industry in steep decline,

o resource running out – forcing govt to move loggers into highly contentious areas = provoking conflict.

o Gunns – large company, has seen the future is not in native forests.

· Industry also agreed not to use native forest wood “waste” to burn for electricity – a major win.

Plantation option in Victoria is real.

· Plantations can meet 98% of our timber and woodchip/paper markets right now – meaning there is no excuse to continue clearfelling and industrial scale logging in native forests.

· Many new building products like compressed wood board and engineered lumber (flooring/craft wood/paneling/LVL etc) don’t require large diameter trees. General framing timber (scantling) is easily supplied by pine plantations. The small amount of feature grade hardwood timber that can’t yet be supplied by plantations (such as for high grade hardwood flooring and high quality panelling) can be provided by alternate and engineered wood products, recycled hardwood or carefully selected trees from native forests (but not clearfell logging).

· The logging industry is in terminal decline in East Gippsland with employment being less than 1% of the region’s total workforce. The rest of Eastern Victoria is similar – and even Maryvale paper mill is 80% plantation based. Not difficult to get them out of Central Highland’s forests.

To ensure secure employment, the industry needs to:

1. Retool their mills to process plantation wood (from Tumut NSW, Sth Gippy or NE plantations).

2. Receive govt assistance to relocate workers and families to the plantation areas of Western Vic. where the plantation companies are actually importing workers from overseas to fill the employment gaps in logging.

3. Take exit packages and be assisted into other areas of employment.

In Victoria we take 1.9 million tones of native forest wood out every year. Of that, 1.5 million tones is pulplogs – all of which is 100% substitutable with plantation wood.

Of the other 400,000 tonnes that are sawlog trees, the are used for pallets, roof battens, fence palings, crossbars on power poles, subfloor bearers - all are easily substitutable by plantation wood and other products.

The 1-2% used for high quality appearance grade furniture, paneling etc could still be taken from native forests if very carefully selected and used. Clearfelling thousands ha is now unnecessary (never was needed until woodchipping dominated).

1986 – NIEIR reported on the projected impacts on the new parks in East Gippy (LCC recommendations). They calculated that unless govt altered their policies there was no future for the industry. They recommended reduction in the take of logs from around 360,000m3 a year of sawlogs (not counting woodchip logs) to 70,000 m3 to ensure sustainability. But government and industry continued cutting at 280,000 through all 1990s and 110,000m3 average in the 2000s).

(In 2002-03 - 191,000m3 sawlogs, in 2003-04 - 135,000m3, 2004-05 – 122,000m3, 2005-06 - 106,000m3, 2006-07 - 91,000m3, 2007-08 - 99,000m3 sawlogs. Plus about 350,000m3 of pulplogs as well. Clearly overcutting – ‘cut-out and get-out’ mentality has ruled the industry and govt)

85% of trees taken from native forests ends up as woodchips. Criminal.

Small 2% of high grade timber can be taken from selectively logged trees off public land while hardwood plantations are established (20-25 years). Some hardwood plantations for pulp could already be used for this if managed for sawlogs and milled in a particular way.

Western Vic plantations is where it’s mostly at – ABARE figures show that up until 2007-08 – only getting 0.5million tonnes m3 of plantation hardwood chips – but this year these plantations are supplying 4 million tonnes! The wall of wood has hit us from plantings in the 80s and 90s.

Western Vic plantations companies (Gunns, Australian Blue Gum Plantations and ITC) are importing jobs from OS to log the plantations! Plenty of scope for helping relocate Eastern Vic logging workers into secure jobs there.

Jill Redwood
Coordinator
Environment East Gippsland Inc
(6800 Bonang Rd Goongerah)
Locked Bag 3
ORBOST Vic 3888

Ph (03) 5154 0145
www.eastgippsland.net.au

Gunn's chairman John Gay abandoned triple bottom line principles for a means to achieve ends strategy.

John Gay's departure was of his own making. He ignored stakeholders - ordinary Tasmanians who value their forests. He labelled them conveniently 'Greens', directed unlimited company resources to try to legally intimidate them.

In January 2009, Gunns was distracted suing Tasmanians protesting at its Triabunna woodchip mill trying defend Tasmania's old growth forests.

During the rest of 2009, the GFC and other factors such as its key export markets declining hadn't helped Gunns' share price. On 20th November 2009 Gunns announced its plans to acquire Great Southern. This sent an optimistic signal that Gunns was consistently profitable investor in its 'big player' role in forestry, pulpwood and plywood.

But in December 2009 Gay unloaded 3.4 million shares at an average price of more than 90 cents each. Then in February, Gunns stunned the market when it announced a first-half profit of only $400,000, dramatically below what had been expected.

IMF has commenced a class action against Gunns alleging Gunns has engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct and breached its continuous disclose obligations between August 31 and February 22, 2009.

Now Gay claims it was all the fault the Greens. Sounds like Gay is trying to keep the logger faith, even though many have shares in Gunns.

The collapse of Great Southern and Timbercorp were because they were dodgy tax avoidance schemes caught by the tax office as such. Timbercorp was always a poor investment because it was predicated on promises of misleading gains from tax deductions. Investors were spruiked to borrow to invest on the assumption the interest rate on the borrowings would be offset by after-tax returns. Timbercorp was about profit on false pretenses. It was nothing about long term investment in sustainable forestry plantations. But it has given plantations a bad name.

Great Southern was similarly based upon investors seeking a tax break investing in blue gum plantations on the promise that when the trees grow they will make money and also get a tax break. Poor investment regulation and poor management have also been blamed.

Former Gunns chairman John Gay and former Premier and Gunns board member Robin Gray are leaders of a colonial prejudiced Taswegian culture that has exploited Tasmania at the expense of ecological, social and economic consequences. Such a backward culture deserves to be pulped.

Gunns has not only lost its pulp mill business, it is selling off its original hardware business to Woolworths' owned Danks for $40 million (24th May 2010). Under the agreement, Danks will acquire Becks Timber & Hardware business and five Gunns stores, one timber joinery centre, a truss manufacturing plant and a support office.

Gunn's tyrannical empire is crumbling.