VICFORESTS COURT RULING MAY HIT PAPER

A Supreme Court ruling against VicForests' native forest logging programme is causing industry consternation, and could lead to the importation of thousands of tonnes of overseas pulp, as Opal’s Maryvale mill may need to make up a potential shortfall in its supply. 

The ruling by Justice Melinda Roberts ordered VicForests to abide by stricter rules in its operations, which the logging industry says are too restrictive and too difficult. The case centred around protecting a native possum, the yellow-bellied Glider. Logging contractors are reportedly already moving their equipment out of the forests. 

Logs from VicForests feed the Opal Maryvale mill. Papers produced by the mill from the trees logged in Victorian Forests includes Reflex copy paper, and a range of uncoated woodfree (UWF) papers used in business and commercial printing. 

Reflex dominates the copy paper market in Australia, with a market share estimated by paper industry bible IndustryEdge to be more than 86 per cent in 2021-22. If the cessation in logging continues, imports would need to increase by more than 100,000 tonnes a year to make up for the shortfall. Already one of the major newspaper wholesalers has told newsagents that Reflex will be supplied on allocation.

The UWF papers produced by Maryvale are used in a range of commercial print applications, with applications such as books, forms, envelopes and offset printing. 

The Supreme Court ruling is the latest in a long line of court battles between environmental activists and VicForests over old forest logging, and what the activists see as its negative impact on forests and local wildlife. 

VicForests is a government-owned agency which manages the state’s forests, looking after growth, regeneration, bio-diversity and the like, in return for being able to log a certain percentage of the forests under its management, each year, which Print21 understands is about 0.1 per cent, with many of the trees logged those that are either fallen down, a bushfire risk, or those that are crowding out other trees. 

The logs that go to Maryvale for conversion into printing paper represent less than ten per cent of all wood coming out of the forests, most of it becomes timber for the construction industry, which may be severely impacted by the end of logging by VicForests.  

The Victorian state Labor government is seriously conflicted; on the one hand it benefits financially from the logging, and the construction industry is vitally important to its economic programme and political success, and it is acutely sensitive to the 1100 well-paid regional jobs in logging that are now on the line – union members are currently running a convoy of coffins to Dan Andrews’ office to highlight the potential death of the industry and their livelihoods. On the other hand, the optics of native forest logging don’t play well in inner-city marginal constituencies, where the party battles with the Greens for election success. Greens state leader Samantha Ratnam has said that if the Greens are asked to form a minority government with Labor, they will demand an end to native forest logging, as part of the deal to get its support, although that is just one in a long list of improbable demands.

The Maryvale mill has five production lines, with three of them now dedicated to packaging grades. The packaging grades are typically generated from softwoods, and so are not affected, while the commercial and copy print grades come from the hardwoods, much of it out of the Victorian old growth forests. 

While telling Print21 that secure, long term, certified wood supply is crucial to its Maryvale Mill operations, an Opal Australian Paper spokesperson said, “We appreciate that VicForests is currently experiencing a range of operational difficulties, which are likely to impact future deliveries of state wood. Opal is continuing to work closely with VicForests and the Victorian Government to manage supply challenges. We remain fully committed to keeping our Opal team members updated on the supply situation as it continues to develop.” 

Opal Australian Paper is owned by the giant Japanese conglomerate Nippon Paper, so is unlikely to be left wanting in the event that logging from VicForests does stop completely, Nippon Paper has around 40 mills in Japan alone.

The issue has now reached national politics, with federal MP Sophie Scamps, one of the new Teals, in her case representing Sydney’s northern beaches, saying that “having the government negotiating with the forestry industry on logging is akin to it negotiating with the tobacco industry on health”, provoking a furious response from local Gippsland MP Darren Chester, who invited Scamps and fellow Teal and logging critic Monique Ryan to East Gippsland, to see the industry for themselves, saying "they could then invite me back to their constituencies to teach me about biodiversity."

The Supreme Court ruling is the latest in a long line of decisions and judgements over the years which have impacted Austraila's ability to manufacture. The continued focus by government, state and federal, on getting the cheapest price has seen billions of dollars of taxpayer money flow overseas, rather than be recycled through the local economy. Printers have long campaigned to get government funded print produced in Australia, arguing that while Chinese print may be cheaper, buying overseas is of no benefit to Australia. In the US, land of the free, all goverment procurement has to be from US producers.