Australia: Wesfarmers Boosts Plantation Chip Exports
3/13/00
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Wesfarmers boosts plantation chip exports
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 2000, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: March 13, 2000
PERTH - Wesfarmers Ltd said it had re-negotiated wood chip export
contracts with Japanese customers to allow the rapid replacement of
native forest chips with plantation-grown product.
The managing director of Wesfarmers, Michael Chaney, said in a
statement that as a result of the change, native forest chip exports
would fall to 270,000 tonnes by 2002 from last year's level of
630,000 tonnes.
Wesfarmers manager of corporate affairs, Keith Kessell, later told
Reuters that the change in export composition would have little
financial impact.
"Essentially, the change is revenue neutral," Kessell said.
Wesfarmers, a diversified industrial group, is a major exporter of
wood chips through its subsidiary, Sotico Pty Ltd (formerly Bunnings
Timber Products).
The company has been subjected to sustained criticism by
environmental groups for its wood chip exports and for its timber
harvesting in native forests.
Chaney said the new agreement allowed Sotico to substitute increasing
volumes of plantation woodchips for native karri and marri chips
which were previously required under the sales contracts.
Plantation chip exports are forecast to reach 750,000 tonnes in 2002
and one million tonnes in 2004.
"These volumes will be produced from the very large bluegum plantings
our company and others have been making on previously cleared
farmland in the southwest (of Western Australia) since the early
1980s," Chaney said.
"In parallel with the negotiations in Tokyo, Sotico has reached
agreement with its supplier of native forest material (the W.A.
Department of Conservation and Land Management) to take less marri
and karri residue logs over the balance of the contracts expiring at
the end of 2003."