Plantation Board’s Record Profit

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32032, 5 July 1969, Page 17

Plantation Board’s Record Profit

The recovery of timber blown down in its plantations in the big storm of April, 1968, was reflected in an excess of income over expenditure of *110,413, the largest profit made by the board, said the chairman (Mr A. S. Rutherford), in his annual report to the Selwyn Plantation Board.

Mr Rutherford said that with 2.25 m cubic feet of timber blown down in the storm, the board, after seeing if logs could be exported to Japan, arranged with the Canterbury Sawmillers’ Association to log the wind-blown timber. Negotiations were, at times, difficult, but agreement wjs reached on stumpage

rates, and by March 31, a total of 1,408,088 cubic feet of sawlogs had been produced, at an average price of 8.73 c a foot

Mr Rutherford said that the blown-down timber was sold at a discount compared with what it would have realised as standing timber. The co-operation of the New Zealand Forest Service in refraining from cutting standing timber in its own

forests, and in asking private owners to do the same, was appreciated by the board. The Forest Service had arranged for operators to cut chipboard, paying the board a stumpage of $3 a cord. Telegraph poles, posts, strainers and other products produced by a timber preservation company, and the chipboard, had accounted for

172,416 cubic feet. Firewood accounted for 12,000 cords, and the combined output from the windblown timber was 1,592,504

cubic feet at March 31 out of the total of 2.25 m cubic feet. Referring to the year’s record profit of $110,413, Mr Rutherford said that in 1949, when an almost equal volume of timber was blown down and logged, the board made a profit of $35,407,