TIMBERCORP’S harvesting operations in its Great Southern forestry plantations have resumed.
Voluntary administrators KordaMentha suspended all of Timbercorp’s operations when the company accepted voluntary administration on April 23 while funding options were determined to cover a nett debt of more than $900 million.
Harvesting crews have been working flat out throughout the region filling trucks for the long trip to the Albany Port woodchip terminal Timbercorp shares with ITC.
Payments to farmers leasing land to Timbercorp are believed to be covered until the end of the financial year.
But the situation is uncertain after June 30 until the voluntary administrators, KordaMentha, plan the company’s funding operations.
Timbercorp has more than 700 lessors around Australia.
The administrators have written to property owners advising of Timbercorp’s administration and seeking confirmation of individual contracts.
The administrators said they would advise property owners if they wished to continue to utilise the property.
The resumption of harvesting and on-site mobile chipping operations came in the same week of a tour by peak industry group, Forest and Wood Products Australia (FWPA).
Despite Timbercorp’s major financial problem and APEC reducing its workforce with a reduction in shipments to Japan, FWPA remains optimistic for the future of the region’s timber plantation industry.
FWPA managing director Ric Sinclair said the industry’s sustainability would continue to add to the region’s success.
“What’s exciting about the Albany region is the mosaic of different types of forestry and agricultural practices,” he said.
“There might be some farmers who leased their land out for plantation investment, some with their own investment and others where the major crop is still grain, but there are rows of sugar gum and spotted gum (for logs).
“There is a real mix and match, and looking at the landscape, there is such a diversity of activity.
“It creates a vibrancy of what Albany demonstrates what can happen in the rural structure.”
Mr Sinclair said confidence was high despite the recent world financial downturn.
“There are companies failing in all sectors,” he said.
“The fact is that the trees are in the ground. They are growing well, they will be processed by someone.
“They will be renewed whether by coppice or reseeding.”
The primary functions of FWPA are investment in research and development projects to advance Australian forest and wood products industries, as well as providing support for promotional and marketing activities.
Funded by industry levies, it is one of 15 national rural research and development corporations established by the Australian Government 20 years ago, of which many operate in the Great Southern (dairy, grain, wool, wine, fisheries).
Board members, who normally meet in Melbourne, travelled from around Australia for the meeting, the first in the region.
Their regional tour included visiting harvesting, coppice management, Mt Romance and Plantation Energy’s factory and CSIRO research work on farms.
FWPA chairman Ron Adams said the diversity of activity within the industry would ensure its continued growth and sustain it well into the future.
He said there was on-going reasearch as the industry in the region faced a learning curve with plantations in the second rotation of blue gums.
Other plantations around Australia had reached third and fourth rotations, with many based on pine.
Mr Adams said fears for the future of rural communities had been allayed with people living on farms turned over to plantations wanting both the lifestyle and satisfying the needs of the industry.