The big timber mill shift change that Tumut has been waiting for has started, but managers at AKD say there won’t be any cuts to hours or jobs for the staff they have on site. Source: Tumut and Adelong Times
The 2019/20 Dunns Road fire burnt through close to 40% of the local timber plantations – over 45,000 hectares of pine – forcing the mills into overdrive to salvage as much log as possible.
In an average year, the Tumut sawmill processes 525,000m3 of sawlog, but in the first six months after the fires, they had already pushed through 300,000 cubic metres.
By May of this year, the salvage operation had recovered 2.7 million tonnes of timber from the Snowy Valleys.
The mill has been bracing for 1 July and an anticipated drop-off of log supply. AKD Tumut Site Manager Rab Green said they’ve been able to preserve jobs by bringing in products from other areas to keep the machines ticking over.
“The business has been bringing in product from Caboolture, Colac and Oberon to substitute some of the loss, hence why we haven’t lost as many people,” he explained.
Mr Green said through natural attrition, the mill had decreased the numbers of its permanent staff, but the company is still hiring casuals to fill vacancies at the moment and will be seeking extra staff once the shift change has had time to settle.
“Natural attrition with people retiring and looking at other opportunities in their life,” he explained.
The shift change will see AKD go from a four-day work week to a five-day week, with the majority of staff working mostly day shift, with the occasional afternoon shift, rather than a rotating day and afternoon schedule.
“It has been really, really positive on site with all the workers,” said Mr Green.
“We have some permanent people on afternoon shift [who chose that because] it suits their lifestyle, but the majority of people are on day shift.”
By extending the working week and transitioning to mostly days, Mr Green said they have been able to balance both the needs of workers and the mill.
“Nothing had changed [regarding hours]. People are still doing a 38-hour week,” he said.
“No one’s lost any jobs, there’s been no jobs lost and no hours changed at all.”
While the change is expected to be a relatively permanent and sustainable structure, Mr Green said the company is still working hard to chase additional wood supply.
“Our log resource is pretty much halved, hence why we changed our shift structure to accommodate that,” he said, echoing the concerns of the Softwoods Working Group that there isn’t enough timber being produced in Australia to meet the nation’s needs.
“The country can’t produce enough framing timber at the moment for housing,” he said.
“We’re actively looking for more log in the area and afield. The issue is that getting the log here is quite expensive. We’re not seeing any grants in that space at the moment.”
While the distant future looks positive, with a 99.3 per cent survival rate for last year’s 4500 hectares of new plantings, the industry knows it’s in for a long wait before they’re back to pre-Dunns Road fire capacities.
In the meantime, Mr Green said his mill will still need more workers than they currently have.
“We won’t know [how many] until we start the shift up next week, but yes, we will be looking for staff,” he said.
“We haven’t been able to find staff to be honest. People are obviously very busy, because we haven’t been getting the people walking in looking for a job that we used to.
“The town’s been very active. That’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned.”
Forestry Corp is anticipating an uptick in volumes starting in 15 years, with the full operation back on track in 30 years.
