Page 30 - Print21 magazine Mar-Apr 2023

| PAPER | MARYVALE MILL
Tragedy in La Trobe
The closure of Australia’s 200,000 tonnes a year papermaking operation at Opal’s Maryvale Mill throws up a host of questions about the future of manufacturing, and of balancing conflicting interests, writes Print21 editor Wayne Robinson.
The yellow-bellied glider possum is a small nocturnal creature living in the old forests of Gippsland, quietly
going about its business of staying alive while most of the rest of the world is asleep. It is one of 13 differen types of possums in Victoria, and
one of 69 scratching out an existence around the country. It is now also responsible for the end of Australian paper manufacturing.
At the tail end of last year, a Supreme Court judge ordered the logging contractors working in the old growth forests of Victoria to take more care over the possums. The judgement came after a years’ long legal battle
by green activists, outraged that
old growth trees in the forests were being sawn down, and taken away
to be chopped up to make paper for printing, and timber for houses.
The logs in question were the sole source of supply for Opal’s paper manufacturing plant at Maryvale, a business built on a logs-in, paper-out model. VicForests, the state-owned body responsible for the state's forests, had a concession in lieu of its management to log 0.1 per cent of the forest annually, logs it then sold to Opal, with 10 per cent of them being used to produce paper, and 90 per cent of them used to produce timber for the construction of new houses.
However, the loggers said the judgement was effectively a bannin order, as they were already taking maximum care, and anything more was unworkable. The day after the judgement they packed up their saws and moved out. That left Maryvale with no supply, and the logs it had
in stock ran out the day before Christmas Eve. Alternatives, either trucking logs in from hundreds or thousands of kilometres away, or bringing in pulp from overseas,
were not economically viable. Opal then had no choice but to
close its white paper manufacturing operation. The yellow glider possum is now living without the noise of the saws, but at least 200 working people have lost their livelihoods, some 200,000 tonnes of paper will have to be imported by merchants to make up the difference, and much of that paper will be significantly more expensive, and millions of Australian dollars will now go to China rather than the communities of Gippsland.
Maryvale produced roughly 50/50 uncoated woodfree papers (UWF) and copier papers. Its UWF papers are typically used in applications such as envelopes, forms, and bills. Its copier papers dominate the market, with Reflex alone ha ing an 80 per cent share and various other brands making up much of the rest. Copier papers will now rise in price from less than $5 a ream to more than $7, as overseas copier papers are subject to an anti-dumping tariff
Now the operation has gone, the recriminations have started. It is not often that a Nationals MP and the forestry union, the CFMEU, are in agreement, but both are apoplectic, and in both cases that rage is directed at state premier Daniel Andrews.
“The Victorian government’s complete mismanagement of Victoria’s native forest sector, coupled with hopeless company management complicit in supporting the government’s so- called forestry plan, has led
to this tragic outcome,” the CFMEU said on its Facebook page. “This tragic outcome
could have been avoided.”
BELOW
Possum vs paper: Yellow bellied glider wins, at the expense
of 200 jobs, and 200,000 tonnes of paper manufacturing each year
Federal member for Gippsland Darren Chester went even further, accusing Andrews of wanting to ‘kill’ country Victoria. He says Premier Andrews ‘must accept 100 per cent of the blame’ for up to 200 job losses at Maryvale.
Chester’s assessment is that, “The combined impact of judicial activism, environmental protests, green lawfare and the abject failure of the Victorian Labor Government to support our world-class and environmentally sustainable timber industry is devastating regional communities across Gippsland.”
Leaving aside the politics, the tragedy of Maryvale is a precursor for many similar situations that will develop in Australia over the coming years, the big question being how do we balance care for the environment with the demands of modern life? Can manufacturing survive in
any form at all? Should it always
be a binary choice between the possum and the paper, or can more intelligent solutions prevail? Can modern life survive, or will we need to revert to a pre-industrial lifestyle?
In this case the activists won, but the working families at Maryvale lost, Gippsland lost, the business lost, the print and construction industries lost, and the nation lost as that paper now has to be imported. It seems a high price to pay to avoid
disturbing a possum’s
sleep.
30 MARCH/APRIL 2023