ONEFORTYONE Plantations presented to Mount Gambier City Council at Tuesday’s monthly meeting.
Elected members put Green Triangle general manager Willie van Niekerk and OFO sustainability and corporate affairs manager Anne Kerr in the hot seat, asking questions about domestic supply, sustainability and rumoured excessive harvesting.
“In terms of sustainability, we model the forest and project 75 years in advance,” Mr van Niekerk said.
“We look at how many trees we will have, the expected density of the trees, customer demand and how we will meet that – it’s a fairly rigorous process.”
He said OneFortyOne had planted over 16 million trees in the past three years.
“In the last year alone we have planted 5.5m trees, which is more than 10ha of trees planted,” Mr van Niekerk said.
“Once a year we have an independent third party audit us to ensure we are acting sustainably.”
When asked about domestic supply to customers, he explained each customer was guaranteed a base volume.
“All of our customers have a volume they have historically taken and we will have a discussion with them if they want more on top of that and a tender process will follow,” he said.
“A different number of trees are planted each year, so the amount of trees available every year varies – there are ups and downs.
“We will guarantee a base load so we don’t over commit.”
Ms Kerr addressed rumours the company was “destroying forests” with rapid and excessive harvesting.
“For the last few years we have been harvesting more than was harvested historically,” Ms Kerr said.
“The reason being we are harvesting products that were to be supplied to the now defunct pulp mill – we are getting rid of that excess product.
“Harvesting will return to average when we have cleared that product.”
She said harvesting had dropped off by 10pc this year and anticipated it would drop another 10pc next year.
“The reduced harvesting operations will have no impact on our direct employees, but may impact our trucking contractors,” Mr van Niekerk said.
