Levy to help foundation

Press, 19 December 1986, Page 3

Levy to help foundation

The members of the Canterbury Forestry Foundation have agreed to a special one-off levy to help the foundation through a tight financial patch. At their recent annual general meeting the members went further than the $2O levy asked for and unanimously agreed to a $3O levy, said the new manager, Mr Owen Springford.

The foundation, an organisation for collective marketing of forest products and the provision of forest management services, had made a loss of $3060, mainly because of handling very few sales for members. The downturn was expected to be temporary, said Mr Springford. Last year the directors

had advised members not to sell woodlots unless they had to, because this year looked like being a bad year for prices. The fears proved to be justified, said Mr Springford. A lot of wood flooded the market from sources such as farmers struggling for income. This was being sold on sawmillers’ terms rather than those of the growers, said Mr Springford. However, farmers were already showing renewed confidence, and the foundation was confident, that the market would return to normal, he said. “There is still a fundamental shortage of timber in Canterbury that we cannot see being rectified

for some considerable time.” The foundation was formed in 1980, and now has more than 200 members, most of them farm foresters or owners of small woodlots.