Environmentalists continue to hammer away at Tasmanian timber company Gunns' proposed $1.4 billion pulp mill in Bell Bay, Australia.

A large-scale pulp mill project in Australia is awaiting approval of the Resource Planning and Development Commission (RPDC) after the Tasmanian timber company Gunns Limited submitted an Integrated Impact Statement (IIS) for its proposed AUS $1.4 billion pulp mill. Bell Bay, in northern Tasmania, has been selected as the site for the mill.

The 7,500 page IIS outlines the environmental, social, community and economic impacts of the mill, both locally and nationwide.

According to Gunns, the proposed mill would have a capacity to produce about 820,000 air-dried-tons per year of bleached Kraft pulp, using an Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF) bleaching process.

Pulp from the mill would be sold to domestic and overseas customers, principally in the Asia Pacific region. Key markets are likely to include Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China, Gunns said.

Environmentalists, most notably the Wilderness Society, are not happy with the prospect of pulp mill and say if it is built it will drive ongoing forest destruction in Tasmania, particularly in the north of the state. “If this pulp mill is approved in its current proposed form, Tasmania's forests will be on the front line of pulp mill-driven destruction,” the Wilderness Society states on its Web site.

In 2008 and 2009, the company hopes to source the bulk of its wood from native forests, but says no old-growth logs as defined by the Regional Forest Agreement will be used.

Other charges by environmentalists and area residents include strong concerns over air emissions and the quality of the effluent that would be discharged from a four kilometer outfall pipe in the Bass Strait.

Gunns executive chairman John Gay said the pulp mill proposal represented the largest-ever investment by the private sector in Tasmania and the largest-ever investment within the forestry sector in Australia.

“We have worked with the world's top engineers to design the mill, we contracted Australia's best toxicologists to analyze any environmental effects, we engaged a leading university to model economic impacts and we have employed international pulp experts to join the Gunns team on a permanent basis,” Gay said.

“The mill design represents world's best practice in achieving the best environmental outcomes.”

Les Baker, project manager for the proposed mill, echoed Gay's assessment and said a number of consultants looked at the environmental impacts of the mill.

“They've advised us that there are no impacts on the environment where they build these mills in cities in Europe, where they discharge their effluent into lakes, where they have recreational activities in the lakes, in the aquatic environment they harvest fish and seafood,” Baker said.

If the IIS is approved, the company hopes to begin construction by early-2007.

About Gunns
Gunns was established in Tasmania in 1875 and is managed from Launceston in the north of Tasmania. It operates nine sawmills, five chipmills, three veneer mills, a winery, vineyards, a construction business and retail hardware stores in Tasmania.

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