Business and Development

There Is $150,000,000 Worth Of

Timber In The Bsip's Forests

From GLEN WRIGHT, in Honiara The biggest single natural resource asset in the British Solomons is merchantable timber. Administration calculates its present worth at $A 150,000,000. Taking a long look into the future, it is setting up the infrastructure for forest exploitation on an increased, sustained-yield basis.

Present interest in the industry is such that four major logging and ten sawmilling companies are vigorously engaged in forestry opera tions, with the product going mainly to Japan, some to Australia.

First in, and the largest of the loggers, is Lever’s Pacific Timbers, a subsidiary of United Africa Com pany (Unilever). After a trial run on Gizo Island starting in 1964, it transferred to Ringi Cove, Kolom bangara, where it has a 20 year supply of trees. There it has built a community of housing and other amenities for 300 personnel. Produc tion started last June, at the rate of 2,000 hardwood logs a month. The staff came from Ghana, Africa, where Unilever has long been engaged in timbering. Foremen are native Ghanians, who will return to Africa after training Solomon Islanders as counterparts.

Five mobile mills

Next in size is Kalena Timber Company, Viru Harbor, New Georgia, branch of a Philippines company owned by United States’ interests. It was initiated in 1967.

Others are: Allardyce Lumber Company, an Australian venture, on Santa Isabel Island (1965) and Shortlands Development Company, Shortland Islands (1966). Private enterprise sawmills are BSI Timbers, Tenaru, Guadalcanal and Mounga Sawmill, Kolombangara. Christian mission sawmills are Catholic and South Seas Evangelical on Malaita

Island and Seventh-day Adventist on Vangunu. Five small mobile mills are scattered about the protectorate.

Log production has doubled each year. It was a million cubic feet in 1966, two and three fourths million in 1967, four and a half million in 1968, and target for 1969 is six mil lion.

Total area of forest land is 1,325 square miles containing 345,000,000 cubic feet of merchantable timber of which 165,000,000 cubic feet are

being worked or committed to ex ploitation. Some 180,000,000 cubic feet are unexploited.

Before 1964 only a small quantity of hardwood logs from Guadalcanal, and Kauri pine from Vanikoro Island, had been exported. The supply of Kauri ran out in that year.

By 1972 timber production should be 10,000,000 cubic feet and con servation practices are aimed at main taining this optimum production an nually.

Says Forest Conservator Keith Trenaman, “Our aim is in advance of the central concept of sustained yield.

We envisage enhanced productivity by planting trees on unused land.

Timber can be our most important crop”.

Trenaman’s basic philosophy and theory of procedure is contained in

An electric crane at Lever's Pacific Timbers, Kolombangara, lifts logs from a truck (right) for workers to cut, measure and mark and then place on the stockpile.

his Forestry Draft White Paper, introduced recently in the BSIP Legislative Council. It proposed the establishment of Forest Areas wherein supplies of trees would be preserved for the next 35 years or until newly planted trees have grown big enough to be felled.

This proposal was strongly op posed by Melanesian members of the legislature who saw it as an in fringement on rights of ownership. (PIM, Oct, 1968, p. 53). After debate, a solution was achieved: all Forest Areas will be cancelled as soon as alternative controls over im ported timber resources can be en forced. One form will be a system of licensing the felling of trees; another will be government purchase or lease of forest lands. Also all timber cutting operations will be licensed to ensure control over their number and distribution.

Long-term marketing

To implement local effort, United Nations Food and Agriculture Administration consultant A. J.

Browning is now in the protectorate to advise the government on long term marketing prospects. His re commendations are expected to form the basis for the government’s ultimate choice of reafforestation methods.

Meanwhile the BSIP Forestry Department is actively engaged in research and experimentation. Seventy species of trees—4o introduced and 30 indigenous—are being studied.

Rates of growth in experimental plots have been favourable—very

fast—in early stages. For example, a species of Eucalyptus that produces good general purpose timber as well as pulp grew 100 feet high and four feet in girth in 10 years.

Especially promising has been the performance in the past four years of a strain of Norfolk Island pine from Hawaii. It is a prime, fine grained, white softwood, free from knots. The trunk grows tall and straight. The only significant indi genous conifer is the Kauri pine which occurs only in the Santa Cruz Islands in small stands, now depleted of mature trees.

Reafforestation began in 1966.

Local, fast-growth hardwoods were replanted on logged-off land. The technique is “uniform system” line planting, whereby seedlings are set

at intervals of seven to 10 feet in cleared lines nine feet wide, 66 feet apart throughout a cutover area, and given intense care for the first three years.

Big trees are poisoned to prevent competition with the seedlings. Re planting is begun three months after felling. Some of the seedlings are nursery stock but most are “wildings'’ gathered from the forest at large which are bedded in the nursery before being planted. About 1,000 acres had been replanted by the end of 1968. The program for the next four years: 9,000 acres.

This method of reafforestation was decided upon because selective cutting (harvesting of only mature trees) is not feasible on account of high log ging costs.

Problems that beset forestry administration elsewhere, especially the Americas, as result of logging, such as disposal of waste, disease, pollution of streams, and erosion of the land, are not yet present in the protectorate. Limbs, leaves and other slash left on the ground rot into valuable humus in two or three years.

Streams clear themselves by frequent flooding. However, erosion is a potential problem on the steep hill sides because of heavy rainfall. This is successfully counteracted by fast growth ground cover on flatter ter rain.

Marketing, says Conservator Trena man, is the key to forestry practice problems. Which are and will be the most saleable types of timber? From whence will come needed finance?

He is seeking guidance from the UN and successful timbering com panies and money from private enter prise and the World Bank. Funda mental to all, he declares, is public ownership of forest lands. At present the productive Forest Estate con sists of 225 square miles. A further 100 square miles should become available by transfer of privately held land. He favours outright purchase with 99-year lease and option of renewal as the less desirable alternative.

Future policy will be that of the controlled forest in water catchment areas; that is, all other agricultural cultivation will be prohibited.

A graduate of Oxford with a Forestry degree, Trenaman was born and reared in Devonshire. He served in the RAF as a pilot during World War 11, and from 1949 to 1956, when he assumed his present post, as gov ernment forester in Uganda, Africa.

He has a staff of eight senior officers, 20 junior technicians and local labor as needed, or about 150 in all. • "Timber slump only temporary ”.

See “Aid for NG timber”, p. 123.

The camp site at lever's Pacific Timbers, Kolombangara. The pre-fabricated aluminium houses accommodate 300 personnel (a quarter of them with families), offices, a school, a workshop, a store (with postal and banking agencies) and a first-aid post. The camp boasts a 24-hour electricity supply, a soccer pitch, a tennis court and a swimming pool.

BSIP Forest Conservator Keith Trenaman.

Carpenter's NG

tea goes to U.S.

Carpenter Holdings have made the first sale of New Guinea tea to the United States and Canada. The tea sold was part of the first commercial production from the group’s Kudjip estate factory, which was commis sioned in November, 1968.

In all, the shipment totalled about 10,000 lb of tea, and the prices obtained were “within the range currently being paid for quality teas on the London market,” said Mr.

C. H. V. Carpenter, the group’s chairman.

Rice price lower?

New prices for Australian rice— tipped to be lower than current prices —will be announced in NG soon, a couple of weeks before the present yearly rice agreement with NSW growers ends. They will be for three years.

A new three-year contract to supply NG with rice was recently agreed to by NG Trade and Industry Department officials, the NSW Rice Marketing Board and the Rice- Growers’ Co-operative Mills Ltd. of NSW. Current prices are brown rice, dried, $136 a ton and white rice, $153 a ton.

Aid for NG timber

The NG Administration has de cided to help NG timber exporters, currently reeling under a slump in the industry because their major market, Japan, is offering poor prices.

Mr. D. Mclntosh, Director of Forests, recently told the NG Timber Industries Association that logging concerns could have their cases for assistance examined by his depart ment. He predicted the slump would be “temporary” and said signs of re covery were evident because more buyers were becoming interested in territory logs.

Manganese, logging

developments in Fiji

More and more Australian money is going into Fiji. Two recent Aus tralian investments are a $750,000 deal to get exports of high-grade manganese started from a 1,200-acre mining area near Lautoka, and a massive logging operation on 130,000 acres of Vanua Levu bushland.

Southland Mining Ltd., registered in Sydney, recently issued a pros pectus offering 2,152,000 25 cent shares to exercise options held by a wholly-owned Fiji subsidiary, Man ganex Ltd., over mining and pros pecting tenements held by Mr. Hari Akhil and Akhil Holdings Ltd. Mr.

Akhil is a Lautoka businessman with Australian horse-racing interests.

The Sydney company also hopes to buy and develop nickel leases in New Caledonia.

Westralian Plywoods Pty. Ltd. has taken out a 30-year timber lease on Vanua Levu and plans to step up log output. Plans are to increase pro

duction from 3J million log feet annually to a level of 20 million log feet by the mid-1970’5. Plywood, veneer and sawn timber mills will go up.

Tonga has its own

tobacco factory

Three hundred pounds of ready rubbed “Friendly Cut” cigarette tobacco is coming out daily from the Polynesian Tobacco Company’s factory, opened recently in Nukua lofa, Tonga.

It’s made from leaf imported from

the US, Africa and North Queens land, Manufacturers say quality is up to the best overseas standards of fine-cut tobacco. A two-ounce pack sells for 5 seniti cheaper than the imported brand.

PTC, with registered offices in Brisbane and a $lOO,OOO capital, has several Tongan shareholders but the real owner is Mr. John Nelson, a Brisbane businessman. He was one of the last individual tobacco manu facturers in Brisbane before he sold to Rothmans of Pall Mall (Austra lia). His son, Michael, is Tongan manager.

Aims are to grow tobacco in Tonga, and hopes have switched from the too-rich Tongatapu soil to Ha’apai and Vavau.

Under Michael Nelson, Tongan labour is employed and staff training includes the processes of tobacco manufacturing and blending.

Machines from Britain are installed and they are capable of cutting up to 3,000 lb per day.

Marketing goes through local wholesalers, and there are prospects for cigarette making and exporting.

There is no reason why the venture should fail.

Competition soon

for NG pyrethrum?

Experts differ on how long newly developed synthetic pyrethrum will take to compete with NG’s infant Highlands pyrethrum industry.

NG’s acting Director of Agri culture, Stock and Fisheries, Mr. G.

K. Graham, says it may be “several years”, but British chemists at the Rothamsted Experimental Station, who have developed the synthetic pyrethrum, say it will go on the world market late this year.

News that a substitute had been developed came in January a little over a week after Stafford Allen (NG) Ltd. of Mt Hagen, announced prices from February would be in creased from 15 to 17 cents a lb for dried pyrethrum flowers, Stafford Allen said the price rise was to “stimulate production”.

Pyrethrum currently earns NG about $400,000 in exports. All ex ports go to Britain,

Problems for BSIP

rice export

Guadalcanal’s rice production next year should exceed 4,000 tons from planned planting of 4,500 acres, fully meeting the Protectorate’s need and providing a 1,000 ton surplus for ex port, according to J. Holsheimer, BSIP Agricultural Officer for rice ex periment.

This acreage is about double that for the 1968 crop, which produced about 2,000 tons of processed rice and fell short of local consumption by about 1,000 tons.

Guadalcanal Plains Ltd. reports in creased interest from overseas in locally grown rice and samples are currently being dispatched in response to inquiries from Indonesia, New Caledonia and Guam for bulk sup plies of 2,000 to 4,000 tons.

Mr, Holsheimer is recommending that the Agricultural Department re sume irrigation experiments.

Bright prospects apart, the next six months will tell if GPL’s ambiti ous plans for rice exports will work.

There is a big problem to be over come yet—the right rice for the right markets has not been developed.

Some interested buyers overseas want short-grain rice and others want long-grain; other customers are loath to commit themselves to a new pro ducer until he can prove by perform ance he can supply regularly.

An export trial of five tons of GPL rice to the Gilberts was a flop

—the Gilbertese wouldn’t eat the rice.

GPL may have started exporting too early before it had really ex amined the market it was aiming at.

Problem now is to come up with rice a Gilbertese, Fijian, New Hebridean and New Caledonian will eat. Un fortunately, at present they aren’t all interested in the same variety.

January's world

copra market report

Mr. lan McDonald, chairman of the P-NG Copra Marketing Board, reported on January 23: The firm upward trend in copra prices is still in evidence, and it seems likely that the average Philippine price this month will be as much as SAS or more above December’s price.

Probably the dock strike in the US has been the main reason for the firming in copra and most other edible oil prices. This strike has now been on for more than a month and could continue much longer.

Another matter which has affected the edible oil market is the subsidy of 2c per lb on shipments of lard to the UK, imposed by the US Gov ernment. However, this is not ex pected to have any major bearing on the price of laurics, but has served to create some reticence on the part of all oil seed buyers.

There has been a further decline in Malayan copra production, and combined with a lack of rain in the Philippines, it is not expected that the copra supply position will im prove very greatly over the next few months.

Fish oil production has fallen away sizeably over the past six months, and although expanding supplies of palm oil and possibly ground nuts are becoming available, it is expected that the general firmness in food oil prices will continue for some time.

Papua and New Guinea production reached 134,500 tons in 1968, 10 per cent, .higher than for the previous record year of 1965, and 19,000 tons, or almost 17 per cent, higher than 1967.

At present, production is well be low peak levels, but could reach over the 130,000 tons mark this year. • In 1968, P-NG’s Development Bank lent s3i-million to 609 borrowers, 471 of whom were New Guineans. As from January of this year, the bank also takes over 289 loans totalling nearly $7-million from the Ex-Servicemen’s Credit Board.