Chinese confident of Kawerau plant wood supply
CHINESE PANEL BOARD COMPANY, FENGLIN, BELIEVES THERE will be sufficient supplies of wood to support a new $180million processing plant to be built in Kawerau.
Fenglin plans to establish a factory to produce 600,000 cubic metres of particle board per year on a new industrial site on the edge of Kawerau by 2020, which will later be expanded to house a medium-density fibre board production facility.
However, concerns have been raised by the Wood Processors & Manufacturers Association that timber mills in the region don’t produce enough wood fibre to supply the proposed plant as well as Oji’s Kinleith and Tasman pulp mills.
While the WPMA “very much welcomes” overseas investment in the New Zealand wood processing sector, Chief Executive Dr Jon Tanner says “it is important that this investment is directed to regions where there is not an already constrained wood fibre supply”.
This prompted New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, which is supporting the project, to investigate whether there is sufficient wood to meet the new plant’s needs.
NZTE has commission Finnish forestry consultancy, Indufor, to provide baseline data on levels of wood fibre available for processing in the region. Indufor will report on current and planned harvest levels, volumes of pulpwood and residues available, as well as planned production and consumption levels in the industry. The report is expected to be delivered by the end of the year.
A Fenglin official is confident of enough wood being available once the new plant is constructed.
John Galbraith, a veteran forester and director of Fenglin Wood Industry (New Zealand), says: “Fibre supply for the new particle board mill in the immediate term will come from existing underutilised wood fibre resources and from the rapidly expanding forest harvest in the wider region.
“The plant will complement existing wood manufacturing, providing alternative markets for existing by-products and our expectation is this will support further investment in new primary processing ventures in the region, utilising fibre that is currently being exported as whole logs.”
The Kawerau community is looking forward to the arrival of the Fenglin plant, as it will help boost employment in the town and surrounding district.
Fenglin had earlier looked at establishing a production facility on the outskirts of Taupo, but pulled back from that plan in favour of the Kawerau site.
Established in 2000, Fenglin is a leading board manufacturer in China, where it is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The company operates three MDF plants and one particle board plant in the Guangxi and Guangdon provinces with total capacity of 810,000 cubic metres a year, and also owns about 14,000 hectares of forests.
NZL