Kangaroo Island Plantation Timbers Ltd (ASX:KPT) has completed an expo of its timber at a yard near Mt Gambier in southeast South Australia and is in negotiations with several mills regarding buying lots from the KPT pine softwood estate.
Logs of different size and varying burn classification were shown to representatives of about 10 mills, including logs from an independent grower on Kangaroo Island.
Buyers were particularly interested in the KPT wood that had positive 'resi testing' results, proving its suitability for construction grade lumber.
KPT is now working with the Master Builders Association to try to address the shortage of timber for construction in South Australia.
Enough timber to build 10,000 homes
Industry leaders, including KPT managing director Keith Lamb, met with Primary Industries Minister David Basham last week to discuss potential solutions to the shortage which has left small building companies vulnerable and new home builders facing increased costs and delays.
Lamb said there was enough structural timber on the island to build about 10,000 new homes.
He said: “We’ve done all the technical specifications on the logs so they know what the quality is like and also the impact of the fire damage.
“Hopefully next week we’ll get a response from them to say they are willing to take the logs and what price, so we’ll negotiate a price, and then we’ll start delivering them.”
Investigating new avenues
Lamb said about half of the island’s 1.3 million tonnes of pine had been blackened by fire but the quality of timber remained unaffected.
The company is investigating various avenues to start moving larger timber from the island but remains committed to its Smith Bay wharf development proposal which awaits approval from the State Government.
He continued: “We have very large volumes of timber to move. This is just a start on our 4.2 million tonnes.”
The Mt Gambier expo was a joint effort between KPT, its contracted harvester Harvestco, contracted forester Rob Heathcote, forest manager PF Olsen and seller’s agent Lew Parsons.