Worker stand-down loom: Maryvale paper mill prepares for “limited stand-downs”

Maryvale paper mill owners warn “unfortunately, limited stand-downs may become necessary” as pulp log supplies dry up.

A Supreme Court ruling has forced a halt to harvesting hardwood pulp logs that are crucial to Maryvale mill’s paper manufacturing.

The Latrobe Valley’s biggest employer, the Maryvale Paper Mill, has warned of worker stand-downs as its hardwood pulp log supplies dry up in the wake of a Supreme Court judgment that has halted native forest harvesting across most of the state.

Opal, which employs 850 workers at its Maryvale mill, issued a statement saying “unfortunately, limited stand-downs may become necessary and we are currently consulting on this issue with our team members.

“No decisions will be made until the consultation is complete. These are temporary measures that we may need to put into place while we work through the potential implications of a court decision that was delivered only 10 days ago.

“Our priority is to continue to keep our team members fully updated on the situation as it develops further.

“As a large Latrobe Valley employer, secure, certified wood supply is crucial to Opal Australian Paper’s Maryvale operations.”

The Weekly Times understands up to 220 of the plant’s workers are at risk of being stood down due to the shortage of hardwood pulp log used in manufacturing the plant’s reflex paper and some brown paper packaging lines.

Australian Paper uses hardwood pulp to make its signature brand Reflex paper.

VicForests warned it had been able to deliver only a week’s worth of pulp logs to Maryvale and that supplies were set to dry up completely, after it was forced to halt harvesting yesterday in response to last week’s Supreme Court ruling.

VicForests ordered the stand-down, after Justice Melinda Richards ruled the state-owned enterprise’s pre-harvest surveys were inadequate and it was not doing enough to protect two possum species – greater and yellow-bellied gliders.

The ruling forces VicForests to resurvey hundreds of coupes, which it confirmed would take months to complete and would leave harvest and haulage contractors without work and exacerbate a sawlog shortage that had already led to the closure of one mill.

Justice Richards also ruled that VicForests had failed to meet its obligations to retain enough vegetation on coupes to protect gliders, under the precautionary principle of the Code of Practice for Timber Production.

The ruling comes as timber workers prepare to rally across Gippsland in protest at the Andrews government’s failure to amend the industry’s code and legislation to protect them from legal action by environment groups, which has led to the latest court ruling.

The Victorian government has a legislated obligation to supply the Opal mill with 350,000 cubic metres of mountain forest pulpwood – mountain, alpine and silvertop ash – each year, until 2030.

That volume was wound back to 256,000 cubic metres after the 2009 Black Saturday fires swept through Victoria, but VicForests has reported constant legal challenges and injunctions from environment groups have meant it has struggled to maintain supplies.

The Andrews government promised in 2017 to spend $110 million to planting out

50,000ha of plantations – 10,000ha of hardwood and 40,000ha of pine plantations – as a means of transitioning workers out of native forests and into plantation forestry.

But just 550ha of trees have been planted to date and a recent contract awarded.

Agriculture Minister Gayle Tierney finally struck a $120 million deal with Hancock Victorian Plantations to plant 14,000ha, which she said would underpin 2000 new and existing jobs in regional Victoria.

But plantation industry experts say it will be at least 12 to 15 years before the pine plantations can be thinned for pulp logs and 25 years before they yield sawlogs.

The order brings to a standstill most of Victoria’s timber harvesting, given harvesting is being brought to a halt in coupes across the state’s two largest harvesting zones the Central Highlands and East Gippsland.

East Gippsland’s timber industry is already on the brink of collapse, with 115 workers facing the axe and warnings Orbost will become a “ghost town”.