MEDIA RELEASE
The Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA) welcomes the Turnbull Coalition Government’s timely announcement of $1.58 million in Federal funding for a strategic forest industry road located near Tumbarumba in NSW.
Federal member for Eden-Monaro Dr Peter Hendy MP announced, at the annual dinner of the local Forest Industry Council, the funding of the Clarkes Hill upgrade on Tooma Road. This additional Federal road upgrade funding is under the existing Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Programme.
Chief Executive Officer of AFPA Mr Ross Hampton said, “The Turnbull Coalition Government recognises the importance of having reliable infrastructure, better road linkages and fixing bottlenecks, to improve efficiency along the forest industry supply chain. Investment in strategic infrastructure will help unlock the growth potential of the forest industry by aiding processing capacity and the flow of forest products. This stimulates productivity and job creation to secure a sustainable future for forest, wood and paper product industries in Australia.”
Tooma Road is an important strategic haulage link, with some 280,000 cubic metres of timber per annum to be hauled to nearby wood and paper product processing facilities within three years. This upgrade will support vital regional businesses such as Hyne’s sawmill at Tumbarumba, Carter Holt Harvey’s sawmill and Visy’s pulp & paper mill at Tumut, to name a few.
The Tumbarumba and Tumut regions are two of the 29 locations recognised as the Strategic Plantation Hubs in AFPA’s policy proposal “Plantations: The missing piece of the puzzle”. These hubs service domestic and export wood and paper markets. Investing in 300,000 ha of additional new plantations across these 29 hubs is expected to create up to 4,533 new regional jobs. Softwood and hardwood plantations provide more than 80% of the wood fibre and timber for Australia’s national forest product industries.
AFPA’s policy proposal “Plantations: The missing piece of the puzzle” can be found here.