Mitsui & Co., (Australia) Ltd. and its joint venture partner Nippon Paper Treefarm Australia Pty Ltd. a subsidiary company of Nippon Paper Industries Co., Ltd. in Japan, will begin loading the first shipment of Green Triangle Blue Gum plantation woodchips today, Tuesday the 4th of April.

 

Plantation Blue Gum woodchip currently in stock will be loaded aboard the woodchip vessel MV Raku Yoh at Mitsui's newly completed woodchip facility in Portland, Victoria. The Raku Yoh is scheduled to depart Portland on Friday, the 7th of April.

 

This first shipment from the Green Triangle region, some 21,000 tonnes of Blue Gum woodchips, is destined for Nippon Paper's Iwakuni Mill in western Japan, and is the first of five such shipments planned for 2006. In total more than 100,000 tonnes of sustainable plantation hardwood woodchips will be exported by Mitsui in 2006 from the Green Triangle region.

 

This shipment marks the start of an on-going export program for sustainable plantation-grown Blue Gum to Nippon Paper Industries, which is planned to increase to over 500,000 tonnes annually over the next five years. Nippon Paper Industries will use the entire volume for the production of pulp and paper.

The plantation timber is sourced from Mitsui's and Nippon Papers Blue Gum plantations located in the Green Triangle Region of South Western Victoria and South Eastern South Australia.

 

This includes timber sourced from Blue Gum plantations in the Green Triangle Treefarm Project, a joint venture between private growers located in the Green Triangle Region, Mitsui, Nippon Paper and ForestrySA. The aim of the project is to provide a harvesting and marketing agreement for private growers with new, existing or second rotation Blue Gum plantations, along with establishment and management advice.

 

In addition to Green Triangle region, a similar joint venture has been established in the Bunbury area of Western Australia. In total Mitsui / Nippon has about 28,500 hectares of bluegum plantations in the three regions. The first shipment from the Bunbury area was despatched in mid-March 2006, with total annual exports from the Bunbury area expected to total 200,000 tonnes.

 

The output from the Bunbury plantation is destined for Nippon Paper's Ishinomaki mill in Northern Japan.