Bryan Haynes
Tasmanian forest manager Forico said that about 100 direct and indirect jobs would be created when its north-west woodchip mill starts operating in July this year. Source: ABC Rural
Forico owns 100,000 hectares of former Gunns’ plantation across the state of Tasmania, and is investing about $20 million into refurbishing two woodchip plants in northern Tasmania.
CEO Bryan Hayes said the $10 million refurbishment of the Surrey Hills Mill, south of Burnie, will increase efficiencies.
“It will be significantly more efficient than it was previously in terms of log handling cost, when we start in July we will start that mill in 750,000 green tonnes per year of production,” he said.
“We will then build up to match wood that we have got available to us but the mill’s capacity on paper would be up to 1.6 million green tonnes per year.”
A green tonne is the term used in the forest product industry for timber that is freshly cut to distinguish it from dried products.
Forico is owned by Sydney-based international investment asset manager New Forests and only harvests from plantations.
Mr Hayes said the mill upgrade will make the company internationally competitive and is well timed with a lower Australian dollar.
“The fall in the Australian dollar recently has been really advantageous and suddenly it is making our operations make a reasonable return on investment and it’s meaning that we can get this plant up and going, getting our wood to market with, I think, a very good medium to long-term future,” he said.
The company is currently exporting about 500,000 tonnes per year from the Port of Burnie to north Asia, which will double when the Surrey Hills mill is up and running.
“In addition to that we are doing about half a million tonnes through the old Tamar mill, now called the Long Reach Mill, another old mill of Gunns, that will be further refurbished and we will lift the production capacity to excess of a million tonnes over the next 12-18 months,” Mr Hayes said.
