Whittakers closing native-hardwood sawmillFriday 13 Dec 2013 Whittakers Timber Products, one of Western Australia’s largest native-hardwood sawmill and processing operations, is preparing to end operations at its mill northeast of Greenbushes, ABC Rural reported on 10 December. The mill, about 250 km south of Perth, is the company’s primary production facility, according to its website.Nearly half of its roughly100 employees were laid off five months ago. The Greenbushes mill site was put on the market, but after a year received no offers, according to site manager Graham Duncan. The jarrah, karri and marri wood the mill processes come exclusively from managed forests in Western Australia under contract by the state government through the Forest Products Commission. Melissa Haslam, from Forest Industries Federation WA, said more environmental restrictions in a newly released forest management plan (see other story in this week's issue) are going to increase the cost of harvesting wood from the forests, putting pressure on multiple levels of the industry. Additionally, Gunns Ltd. sold about half of the contracts to its resources in the south of the state to Auswest Timber, leaving Whittakers with northern resources that were unviable to the mill site in the south of Australia given the expense of transporting the timber. Source: ABC Rural |
Copyright 2004-2024 © Innovatek Ltd. All rights reserved. |