FORESTRY AT THE FOREFRONT

Wood product exports are big business for Gabon and wood products accounts for around nine percent of all exports, second only to oil and manganese.

Some 85 percent of the country’s landmass is covered by forest, and of these 21 million hectares around half is allocated as concessions for commercial production.

According to Singh, Gabon has the capacity to produce approximately 3.4 million cubic metres of round logs annually from the forests currently under harvesting, and this figure is likely to go northward when the all the forest concessions of 15.8 million hectares goes under logging.

He adds: “With long term sustainability of operations in mind, there is still a scope for another 120-150 more wood processing units to settle in GSEZ, or within Gabon.

“Moreover, the species and quality of wood required by veneer units, saw mills, furniture manufacturers and flooring companies are different, so they are not competing with each other for the raw material.

“GSEZ, as part of its business facilitation mandate, started a log supply chain by sourcing logs from third parties at the beginning of 2017 to facilitate the availability of raw material to all wood processing units at the site.

“All the wood processing units in Nkok exported around 160,000 cubic metres of veneer and 120,000 cubic meters of sawn timber in the year 2018, excluding the plywood and furniture. So, roughly around 700,000 cubic metres of wood was processed last year by the unit in Nkok SEZ.”