Pan Pac gets free pass to buy land
WELLINGTON: Land Information Minister and Green MP Eugenie Sage has given a foreignowned forestry company a free pass to buy thousands of hectares of New Zealand land without applying to the Overseas Investment Office (OIO).
Japaneseowned Pan Pac Forest Products was given the special approval to bypass the OIO to purchase land for forestry for the next three years as the Government sought foreign forestry money to help meet its tree planting targets.
The preapproval was given to Pan Pac despite the Green Party having strongly protested land sales to foreigners and Forestry Minister Shane Jones saying he was sympathetic to rural concerns that converting productive farm land to forestry could cost jobs.
Associate Finance Minister David Clark signed off on Pan Pac’s pass, known as a ‘‘standing consent’’, alongside Ms Sage.
The free pass allows Pan Pac to make 25 transactions involving 20,000ha of land and is valid until 2022.
Ministers signed off on the decision on September 19 but kept it under wraps until now.
Ms Sage defended the decision, saying Pan Pac had been in New Zealand since the 1970s, was a large exporter of quality timber and needed to secure its wood supply.
‘‘They’ve got a long standing reputation in New Zealand. They’ve increased their investment here; they’ve got a strong workforce. We want to add value to our forestry exports, not just have log exports, and Pan Pac is a company that can do that.’’
Under the scheme, Pan Pac, which is 100% owned by Japan’s Oji Green Resources, would have to notify the OIO only once a transaction to buy New Zealand land for forestry was settled.
Pan Pac managing director Doug Ducker said the company was likely to use the special consent to buy land around its wood processing mills at Whirinaki, north of Napier, and at Milburn, south of Dunedin.
He said the preapproval would make it much easier to compete for land purchases, as the company would not have to wait up to a year for OIO approval.
OIO group manager Vanessa Horne confirmed to RNZ that the deal allowed Pan Pac to buy farm land to convert to forestry.
The move has stoked fears in rural communities that their towns will be hollowed out by the ‘‘green rush’’ to forestry.
Andy Scott, spokesman for lobby group Fifty Shades of Green, formed to voice rural concerns about job loses from converting productive farmland to forestry, was horrified by the deal.
‘‘How can they give a free pass to a Japanese company to come and buy productive farms to turn into pine trees? They will be lost to New Zealand forever. Gone.’’
He believed the decision would add fuel to the fire ahead of a protest march on Parliament the group was planning for November 14.
The option to give preapproval to bypass the OIO was made available under 2018 law changes designed to attract foreign forestry money, but the Pan Pac deal is the first time it has been used.
More than 70% of the forestry sector is foreignowned. — RNZ