The prefab industry will have a new supplier for its construction timbers, following the announcement that OneFortyOne Plantations are taking over the Jubilee Highway timber mill.

South Australian forestry company OneFortyOne Plantations has announced its intention to buy the Jubilee Highway timber mill at Mount Gambier from Carter Holt Harvey, taking on its 300 plus employees.

The deal also includes CHH’s woodchip operations at Portland, Victoria and is subject to approval from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

Jubilee Highway is a large sawmill in Mount Gambier, South Australia. Jubilee Highway processes softwood sawlogs into structural timber products used in the residential and commercial construction of wall frames and roof trusses.

The mill also produces some non-structural timber products (including packaging and decking), and its products are sold to wholesalers, frame and truss manufacturers and retail merchants.

OneFortyOne currently supplies all the major local Green Triangle processors with product, ensuring a dynamic and competitive market for log processing. The operations at Portland handle the woodchip from the Jubilee Mill and other third-party sawmills in the Green Triangle.

OneFortyOne’s CEO Linda Sewell says the intended acquisition was further evidence of the company’s strong commitment to the Green Triangle.

“We have no plans to expand the mill, but will continue to manage the forest estate on a sustainable basis and meet our obligations to the state,” Sewell says. “This is a great business and it is an excellent opportunity to provide security to the local forestry sector.

“We are the only forest grower in the Green Triangle that supplies logs to all local timber processors. Since assuming custodianship of the forests five years ago, we have increased supply to domestic customers by more than 45 percent.

“We are committed to retaining a diverse and enduring customer base, and this is unchanged as a result of the proposal.”

TimberTrader News understands this to mean that all of Carter Holt Harvey’s previous obligations to providing timber for the prefabrication market will remain unchanged.

OneFortyOne bought the rights to three forward rotations of the South-East pine plantations from the state government in 2012, and took over management of the forests in 2015.

The majority of the OneFortyOne Plantations estate is located in SA’s South-East, with smaller areas in south west Victoria.

The company celebrated its fifth-year milestone last month, has a small head office in Melbourne, and currently employs up to 65 people in Mount Gambier.

The Green Triangle

ForestrySA manages more than 12,500ha of native forest across the Green Triangle forest district, largely located within South Australia’s South East.

These forests have long been popular for their biodiversity and abundance of natural features, such as native flowers, plants and wildlife, wetlands, limestone caves and sinkholes.

ForestrySA facilitates public access to Crown Land under lease arrangement to pine forest grower OneFortyOne Plantations.

This allows thousands of people to continue to visit the local pine forest estate. Pockets of unique native forest can be found hidden within the commercial forests and are widely recognised for their floristic diversity.