Maryvale mill shutdown: No more Australian made copy paper

About 300 workers face being stood down at Maryvale paper mill on unless native forest timber coupes can be reopened.

Reflex paper manufacturing is set to grind to a halt at Maryvale paper mill without native hardwood pulp.

Australia’s last white copy paper processing site at Maryvale paper mill in the Latrobe Valley faces closure, says the CFMEU, forcing 220 workers out a job and the nation to solely rely on imports.

VicForests has already confirmed it has only been able to supply the Maryvale Paper Mill with about a week’s worth of hardwood pulp logs to manufacture its Reflex copy paper, following a Supreme Court judgment that has halted harvesting across most of the state.

CFMEU president Bill Scott said unless a source of native forest hardwood could be found the mill’s white paper processing site would close early next month, meaning “no more copy paper” would be manufactured in Australia.

“We spent so much time during Covid not being able to get things from overseas,” he said. This is the end of white copy paper in Australia.”

When contacted for comment Maryvale’s owners, Japanese-owned Opal Australian Paper, referred The Weekly Times to statements it made yesterday, that while “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.

“The current VicForests situation continues to create supply challenges for the Maryvale Mill.”

The Weekly Times understands up to 220 of the plant’s 850 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.

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

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

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

VicForests ordered most of its harvest and haulage contractors to stand-down their workers, 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.

Anger over the court ruling led 500 sawmill workers, harvest and haulage contractors to converge in 77 log trucks and other vehicles on Morwell today to demand the Andrews government take action.

But to date all Labor Agriculture Minister gayle Tierney has done is issue a statement that “We will continue to support contractors, timber businesses and the community as we implement the Victorian Forestry Plan.”

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.