Western Australia’s second largest timber mill has been stripped of a major native timber supply contract after it was caught on-selling more than 100 tonnes of marri logs for export. Source: ABC News, Timberbiz
Under its contract with the Forest Products Commission (FPC), Nannup Timber Processing is required to locally process all logs from state-owned native forests. However, an FPC investigation found that in the first six months of this year, the Nannup mill on-sold at least 165 tonnes of state-sourced marri logs for export.
The WA Forestry Minister Dave Kelly described it as a serious breach of contract.
“We expect everybody within the timber industry to play by the rules, and in this case the company breached their contract terms and so they’ve lost the contract,” Mr Kelly said.
The contractual requirement to locally process timber from state-owned native forests is aimed at protecting WA timber industry jobs, and ensure logs are processed into value-added products like furniture and flooring.
“We’re about protecting the West Australian timber industry and local jobs,” Mr Kelly said. “So they [Nannup Timber Processing] have now paid a price for doing the wrong thing and I hope that sends a message to others who might think about moving outside their contract requirements.”
The operators of Nannup Timber Processing declined to interviewed by the ABC, so it is not known where the logs were sent, for what purpose, or for what price they were sold.
The FPC investigation into the mill was triggered by a series of photographs of native logs being prepared for shipment at Fremantle Port taken by people associated with the native forest conservation group, the WA Forest Alliance. The group is lobbying for an end to the logging of all native forests.
The Forest Products Commission said there was no reason to believe any other WA mill was exporting native forest logs in contravention of its contract.
