The owners of the Heyfield sawmill have no intention to sell it to the State Government and have revealed more about details of their plans to relocate the mill to Tasmania. Sources: ABC News, The Age, AAP, Herald Sun, The Australian
The jobs of 260 Heyfield workers are in limbo after they were told that the site would close within 18 months.
The mill’s owners, Australian Sustainable Hardwoods (ASH), rejected a timber supply offer from state-owned logging company VicForests, deeming it unsustainable.
The State Government indicated it would consider buying the mill, but ASH director Clinton Tilley scoffed at the suggestion.
“At what point does Daniel Andrews think that he just buys a business and what makes him think it’s for sale,” he asked.
ASH instead outlined a plan to relocate the mill to Burnie on Tasmania’s north-west coast.
“We would plan that as parts of Heyfield became no longer needed, that we would look to relocate down to Tasmania,” he said.
“It’s over the coming two years, it’s not an immediate thing tomorrow, it’s a two-year proposition.”
Despite the company’s plans, the Victorian Government said its offer remained on the table.
“While the management at ASH are planning to abandon the Heyfield community, the Labor Government stands ready to keep the mill operational and save local jobs,” a Government spokesperson said in a statement.
Going South to Tasmania
Mr Tilley said ASH was confident a deal would be reached with Tasmanian forestry plantation company Forico to process their eucalyptus nitens timber.
Tasmania’s mills process the nitens timber for low-value products like woodchips but ASH said its technology would allow it to process the timber for higher-quality products like floorboards, tables and window frames.
“We’ve developed our own drying and cutting schedules to enable it to be used with additional technology that we have at our plant that no other plant in Australia has,” Mr Tilley said.
ASH indicated it would look to relocate some staff from Heyfield to its Tasmania mill if the plan goes ahead.
Forico chief executive officer Bryan Hayes declined to comment.
The Tasmanian Government welcomed the proposal.
“We have had discussions with the Hermal Group, owners of Australian Sustainable Hardwoods,” a spokesperson said. “We would welcome any businesses wishing to flee a Labor government that is trying to shut down industry to Tasmania, where the Liberal Government is encouraging growth and investment.”
Tasmania could offer lucrative incentives to the owners of Victoria’s Heyfield timber mill to move to the island state as it remains in bitter dispute with the Andrews government.
Australian Sustainable Hardwoods said it would not discuss selling its plant in Victoria’s Gippsland region to the government, despite Premier Daniel Andrews’s insistence the plant would stay open, flagging a potential public buyout.
Representatives from ASH will meet the Tasmanian government about expediting the construction of a plantation sawmill, with plans to turn eucalyptus timbers into wood products.
Hermal Group said the only talks it would hold with the Andrews government would be about guaranteeing supply for the next year.
“In terms of the mysterious sale offer, I can tell you that after the Premier on Friday breached the agreement to allow us to talk to our staff before either of us did media, the owners are in no mood to talk to the Premier about anything unless it is about providing supply to keep all our staff employed,” said spokesman James Lantry.
“We have now accelerated our engagement with the Tasmanian government and this includes potentially relocating our high value production facility to Tasmania.”
The forestry union has also rejected a government buyout as a panacea, predicting about half the workforce could still be sacked because of reduced supply.
The company had not asked for any incentives from the Tasmanian government, focusing instead on methods of drying and sawing the eucalyptus nitens plantations — unpruned trees planted for pulp wood — for use instead in sawn timber products.
However, Tasmania left open the option of incentives, which could include anything from infrastructure provision to payroll tax holidays.
“The government hasn’t ruled out providing support and has made it clear it would support any potential move to Tasmania,” a spokesman said.
CMEU backs Heyfield
The Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) backed ASH through the negotiating process with the Victorian Government, but the mill owner could face some opposition from the union if the jobs leave Heyfield.
CFMEU Victorian district secretary Frank Vari vowed to fight to keep the jobs in Gippsland.
“We don’t care who owns the mill — it’s the jobs that matter,” he said. “The mill is too important to our members, too important to the community of Heyfield and too important for the industry.”
Union leader John Setka has declared that the Heyfield timber mill dispute in Gippsland is “fixable”, and warned that if the mill closed it would be “a catastrophe”.
“There are not insurmountable things to fixing it,” he said.
Mr Setka, the Victorian Secretary of CFMEU Construction, said that in some country towns there were “not too many opportunities”.
“If a place like this closes down, it is an absolute disaster for the whole community.”
With hundreds of timber industry workers and their families holding placards as they stood out the front of Trades Hall in Carlton, Mr Setka described the mill as one of the biggest in Australia.
“Peoples’ livelihoods are at stake, there’s a whole community at stake. I mean let’s get it fixed. I mean this is a pro-jobs government, so how about they get on with the job and create more jobs, and not let some of these communities just die away,” he said.
About 40 semi-trailers parked outside State Parliament on Tuesday 21 March, International Forests Day, as protests against the closure of the Gippsland hardwood mill ramp up.
About 250 workers will lose their jobs when the mill closes, and the CFMEU claims this could further affect 10,000 local jobs, and other Victoria businesses that rely on the timber mill.
Brett Robin is a fifth-generation logger in the Central Highlands, from where the Heyfield mill timber is sourced. He left his home in Yarra Junction at 2am, met fellow truck drivers and loggers at Officer at 3am, and started the convoy to Spring Street.
“They reckon the timber is not out there, but it is,” Mr Robin said. “They” is the “greenie Labor government”.
Victorian Trades Hall secretary Luke Hilakari said the entire union movement was behind
the workers.
“The work you do is just so important. Some people might say it’s just 250 jobs, but you
know it’s much more than that — it’s all the people who drive the trucks, it’s all the people
with the product that comes to Melbourne all across Australia,” Mr Hilakari told the rally.
The union has not ruled out more rallies through Melbourne’s CBD to increase the pressure on the State Government to provide more timber to the mill.
