Paperlinx

Paperlinx (asx|PPX) is an Australian company which formed when the board of Amcor Limited divided its packaging and paper manufacturing interests into two separate businesses. The paper-manufacturing arm was listed as a separate company on the Australian Stock Exchange and Paperlinx Limited was formed. It took over the production of the Reflex Brand. Australian Paper is the manufacturing arm of Paperlinx.

Maryvale mill

Currently the largest pulp mill in Australia, Maryvale mill lies in the Latrobe Valley in Victoria and has done so for the past 70 years. It has five paper machines with a total annual capacity of 550,000 tonnes of paper.

During this time this mill has moved between pulp and paper giants from its early days with The Australian Paper manufacturers (APM) to Amcor Limited, Australian Paper’s former parent company, which was formed out of Australian Paper Manufacturers Ltd (APM) in 1986, then to Australian Paper when that was spun out of Amcor.

The Maryvale complex is the largest pulp and paper manufacturing facility in Australia and consumes approximately 1.4 million cubic metres of wood per annum, with 633,000 cubic metres sourced from softwood pulpwood, and 812,000 cubic metres of hardwood pulpwood (Jaakko Poyry 2001).

According to history, it was this mill's hungry appetite that gave birth to the integrated logging regime. This paved the way to current clearfell logging practices.

The method of logging is currently applied to the majority of logging within Victoria and Tasmania’s native forests.

APM established the Maryvale Mill in 1937. According to Sinclair (1990), this was due to the state government granting the company access to 223,000 hectares of state forest in the Central Highlands of Victoria and South Gippsland for a 50 year period to source pulp logs under a Wood Pulp Agreement, passed in 1936.

Shortly following the agreement in January 1939, large sections of the designated area were burnt in Victoria’s worst bushfire. Many of the trees were rendered unsuitable for sawmilling, however, APM was able process the fire affected logs and sought to extract them. This led to large areas of forest being salvage logged (Sinclair 1990), and by 1950, the total volume extracted was nearly 1,500 million super feet.

This was to have a significant impact on the forest landscape in the Central Highlands of Victoria. The majority of live and dead hollow bearing trees that remainedafter the bushfire were removed, leading to a significant decline in hollow bearing trees. A number of species, such as the endangered Leadbeater's Possum, are now in serious decline due the impacts of these logging operations (Lindenmayer and Ough 2006).

In 1955, pulpwood production to supply APM at Maryvale increased to more than convert|4.5|Mcuft|m3, and by 1959, APM began to consider expanding their operations. They investigated longterm supply availabilities from the state forests to support the expansion, and in 1961, a new legislative agreement, Forests (Wood Pulp Agreement) Act 1961, was entered into between APM and the state government. It was ratified in parliament in 1963 and was to remain in place until the mid 1990s.

During the later half of the 1980s, APM became Amcor Limited, and again, sought to further expand its operations at Maryvale. By the early 1990s, the company began planning to build the new $380 million M5 office paper machine, with the intent to produce high-quality office papers, such as the Reflex brand. The company sought further guarantee of long-term access to pulp log resource from state forests, so as to attract investment for the expansion. The company requested the Forests (Wood Pulp Agreement) Act 1961 to be replaced with a new agreement. As Minister Marie Tehan of the Victorian Government (1996) announced:

The Forests (Wood Pulp Agreement) Act 1996 was passed in 1996 and replaced the previous legislative agreement. The Victorian Government bound itself to make available to AMCOR Limited a minimum annual supply of pulpwood until the year 2030, from the specified forest area map detailing Agreement Area between the Victorian Government and Amcor Limited to be:
# In each of the years 1996-1997 to 2003-2004 inclusive – 500,000 cubic metres
# In each of the years 2004-2005 to 2006-2007 inclusive – 450,000 cubic metres
# In each of the years 2007-2008 to 2009-2010 inclusive – 400,000 cubic metres
# In each of the years 2010-2011 to 2029-2030 inclusive – 350,000 cubic metres, …of which at least 300,000 cubic metres shall be made available to the Company or delivered by the Department to the Company as the Plan of Utilization may require from mountain forests inside the Forest Area (Victorian Government 1996).

In February 1999, the then state premier Jeff Kennett formally opened the M5 expansion. One year later, Amcor announced the proposal to de-merge. Paperlinx took over the legislative supply of pulpwood to the Maryvale Mill following the de-merger (Jaakko Poyry 2001, DSE 2004) and continued the production of Reflex.

In a comment made to "The Age" shortly before the passing of the legislation, Dr David Lindenmayer expressed concern that the agreement would threaten the survival of the endangered Leadbeater's Possum (Winkler 1996). Conservation groups echoed this and other concerns and carried out numerous campaigns. Amcor, its employees and the Pulp and Paper Workers Federation counteracted these campaigns in what was to become an intense conflict over the management of forests in Victoria (Four Corners 2006).

Forty volunteers, employed by Amcor Limited at the Maryvale Mill, formed the ‘Maryvale A Team’ to counter claims against the company made by other interests (Way 1991). At first, Amcor Limited was cautious to support the group, however, it became supportive when the group successfully lobbied the state government to approve the mill discharging of its waste via a sewer outfall to Bass Strait (Strong 1998).

Derek Amos, former state Labor MP, was employed by the company to lead and train the group. The activities the group carried out included infiltrating environmentgroups and reporting back information, and influencing the Australian Labor Party on its forest policy, by sitting on its environment policy committee (Four Corners 2006). Amcor and the Maryvale A Team, in seeking to expand the mill at Maryvale, successfully lobbied government for approval to discharge the mills waste via a sewer outfall to Bass Strait. Following this, the A Team focused its attention on ensuring the continuity of supply of raw materials for the industry. Geoff Morley, former A Team member, stated that guarantee of supply was vital for the mill to expand and the Amcor would not invest in this expansion without this guarantee (Way 1991).

The Victorian Liberal Party, then in power, was also very supportive of the company. According to a Victorian Government media release, the government had been working closely with Amcor Limited to facilitate the investment in the expansion of Maryvale (Victorian Government 1996b). With close relations with the major political parties, the company was able to have the legislation passed, despite the concerns and objections raised by scientists and environment groups.

Following the de-merger of the paper production and distribution area of Amcor into Paperlinx, the Maryvale A Team was disbanded. Paperlinx sacked Amos (Four Corners 2006), the CFMEU saw the group as being ‘out of control’ (Bachard 2006b), and an article in "The Age" had Amcor distancing itself from the group (Bachard 2006a). However, the forest policies that were lobbied for and achieved during the 1990s by Amcor’s interests currently remain in place. Amos claimed on Four Corners (2006) that the Australian Labor Party's forest policy still reflects the interests of the Maryvale A Team. The Forests (Wood Pulp Agreement) Act 1996 that was passed for Amcor was transferred over to Paperlinx following the de-merger (DSE 2004) and continues to supply pulpwood from state forests to the Maryvale Mill.

In August 2005, Paperlinx announced the proposal to install a new ECF bleaching plant and upgrade the kraft pulping at the Maryvale Mill (Paperlinx 2005). In its EPBC Act 1999 referral to the Department of Environment and Heritage (DEH), the company stated its intent to transition out of native forest and rely on plantation fibre around the year 2019 (Paperlinx 2005b). Until that time, Paperlinx have stated they intend to continue to source pulp logs from VicForests.

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