THE region’s largest integrated forestry company will pour $20m into its Mount Gambier sawmill this financial year to drive efficiencies and secure its expansive workforce.
The OneFortyOne Plantations capital expenditure into its Jubilee Sawmill Wood Products site will also see nearly $10m flow to regional contractors.
Considered to be the second largest facility of its type in Australia, the sawmill directly employs 300 people and more than 1000 indirectly.
The Border Watch this week was given an exclusive tour of the expansive log processing site, which is the first time media has been allowed into the mill for more than 20 years.
The previous owner Carter Holt Harvey had a long-standing media ban that locked out journalists from entering its regional facilities.
While there have been some concerns raised from regional stakeholders over tightening log supply to other processors, OneFortyOne has pledged the sawmill upgrade will not result in additional logs flowing into the site to be processed.
Nearly $14m of the capital expenditure has been earmarked for the construction and commissioning of an additional 61 sorter bins.
The concrete for this project is expected to be poured on the site today after it gained development approval this week from Mount Gambier City Council.
“This project will not expand the capacity of the mill, but will mean greater efficiencies on the site,” sawmill manager Paul Hartung said.
He said the project was focused on extracting more value from each log given wood-fibre was the most expensive cost to the mill.
“This project is not about increased log input, but is about maximisation and recovery of the fibre. It has never been about putting extra logs into the mill.”
Mr Hartung said the upgrade would see the mill edge closer to becoming among the most efficient sawmills in Australia.
The manager also foreshadowed the company would continue to roll out other investments into the site, including new technology in other parts of the sawmill.
He said these investments – including previous projects by CHH – had not led to any workforce redundancies.
“This is a great story for not only the mill, but its employees,” the facility manager said.
“When these new investments are completed, close to $40m will have been spent on the mill in the past five years. This shows not only confidence in the industry, but also in the team at the Jubilee Highway site.”
With both the sawmill and plantation business under its ownership, OneFortyOne Plantations is now among the biggest employers in the region given its 360-employee workforce.
The massive sawmill is also just behind the processing capacity of Australia’s largest sawmill Hyne and Son in Queensland.
Fortunately, Mr Hartung said the Mount Gambier sawmill was also energy efficient given its wood-fired heat plants.
“We generate 40 megawatt of energy from our kiln drying, which is 100pc wood-fired – there is no coal or gas used. It is just sawdust from the sawmill mixed with off-cuts,” Mr Hartung said.
“We do not run any fossil fuels to power our heat plants – it is green energy from our residues. It is one of the lucky mills in the region where we can handle all the residue that we produce.”
The sorter bin project will be installed by a cluster of Green Triangle contractors, including Whitty Engineering, Gabriels Electrical, Griffin Plumbing, Blackbird Industries, Osscon, GT Bobcat, SAPN and Walker and Gray.
Mr Hartung said the company was committed to using as many regional contractors as possible in the current investments.
OneFortyOne purchased the sawmill from CHH late last year.
The sawmill produces predominately structural timber for the domestic market.
It also has two treatment plants and a roundwood treating process.
