DPM Hon Michael McCormack, Mayor James Hayes, CEO Jon Kleinschmidt and Member for Albury Justin Clancy
Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon Michael McCormack MP, NSW Member for Albury, Justin Clancy MP, Snowy Valleys Mayor, James Hayes and Deputy Mayor John Larter all attended the Hyne Timber Tumbarumba Mill last week to further understand the impacts of the bushfires on the softwood industry.
Timber from the Tumbarumba Mill supplies 1 in 4 new homes across the NSW market and beyond, supporting all the local jobs along the way.
7500 harvested plantation pine logs are processed each day resulting in daily structural framing volumes which would stretch from Tumbarumba to Melbourne.
The Mill sees 150 trucks in and out each day and directly supplies to over 400 different customer sites in addition to exporting 1400 shipping containers of non-structural grade timber to 5 different nations.
The industry supply chain supports approximately 5000 jobs in the South West Slopes region and $2billion per year to the South West Slopes economy alone.
Hyne Timber CEO said the dignitaries visit was focussed on the short and long-term challenges ahead given over 50,000 hectares of pine plantation is fire impacted in NSW alone.
“While the full extent of fire impact and salvageability time frames remain unknown, what we do know is full recovery will take many years.
“Until plantations are re-established in 20 – 30 years’ time, interim solutions for viable log supply are required with the support of all levels of government.
“This includes prioritising all pine plantation for domestic processing over export, freight equalisation for Australian processors, and dedicated recovery coordination covering the short-term salvage and the longer-term issues of replanting and wood flow management.” Mr Kleinschmidt said.
Hyne Timber is Australian, privately owned and dates back to 1882, employing 630 people nationally, 230 of whom are at the Tumbarumba Mill.
“We remain committed to the long journey to recovery and value the ongoing, critical Government support as we work to find solutions to secure pine log supply through challenging times.” Mr Kleinschmidt concluded.
Investing for Growth - Seven New Robots - Hyne Tumbarumba
The dignitaries visit to the Mill included a tour of the new $3.7M investment in seven robots to stack timber into packs. This area previously had high vacancy rates and the highest risk of manual handling injuries. While the robots themselves came from Japan, most of the installation investment (over $3M) was awarded to Australian suppliers.
Six existing team members are being professionally developed to operate them while others who previously worked in this area are being professionally developed to work in other parts of the Mill.