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Company Information for Forest Enterprises Australia Ltd
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 ASX; FEA
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Company Statement
Forest Enterprises Australia (FEA) is one of Australia's leading integrated forestry and forest products companies with a 23-year record of success.
We select land, establish plantations, grow trees, and value-add timber through our processing facilities and the marketing of our branded EcoAsh®, BassPine® and SmartFibre ranges.
FEA's forestry expertise is the foundation of our success and the reason we are currently achieving industry-leading plantation growth rates and returns for our grower investors.
Forest Enterprises Australia Ltd (FEA), the parent company of the FEA group of companies is a publicly listed company and a leading forestry and forest products business operating across the timber processing and agribusiness sectors.
FEA established its own hardwood eucalyptus plantations in Tasmania in 1987 and subsequently on mainland Australia, predominantly the northern rivers region of New South Wales. FEA Plantations Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of FEA, commenced its first managed investment scheme in 1993 and issued 16 consecutive timber investment projects.
Corporate Vision & Strategy
Vertical Integration
Our expertise runs from choosing suitable land, raising funds for plantation establishment through managed forestry investments, establishing and growing trees to selling the resulting wood as branded timber and fibre in Australia and overseas.
Specialisation
We focus on what we do best - forestry. There are enough growth opportunities in this sector without spreading our resources thinly across others.
Independence
We're building our own sustainable private forest estate because our growth depends on access to a high-quality plantation resource. Maximising returns means choosing the right species and locations as well as ensuring good forest management and quality control.
Innovation
FEA sustains a competitive advantage and the ability to differentiate itself from its rivals by maintaining a learning culture and a strong research and development program - without waiting for governments to take the lead.
Owning Distribution Capacity
Developing our own marketing know-how and sales channels, building our own brands and being close to our customers will allow us to influence prices, and exploit new and emerging markets.
Current Operations
FEA Plantations Limited (FEAP) is a leading fund manager in the managed agribusiness sector, renowned for the quality of its managed forestry projects.
FEAP, a wholly owned subsidiary of Forest Enterprises Australia Ltd (FEA), has an Australian financial services (AFS) licence authorised to provide a range of general financial services (AFS licence no. 243515) and is responsible for managing hardwood plantations on behalf of over 11,000 investors.
FEAP has raised over $331 million in capital from 16 consecutive managed forestry projects since 1993. It currently has over 67,000 ha of plantations under management in Tasmania, northern NSW and south eastern Queensland.
Timber Products
FEA Timber Pty Ltd (FEA Timber) is the timber products and trading division of FEA. Established in 2002 and located at Bell Bay in northern Tasmania, FEA Timber's current sawn timber operations process in excess of 150,000 tonnes per year of small to medium diameter plantation softwood and hardwood logs into a broad range of sawn timber structural products for the building and construction industry.
Its operations currently consist of the following advanced technology processes:
* Log scanning and sorting
* Finnish manufactured "HewSaw" sawmilling
* Gas fired kiln conditioning and drying
* Planing and moulding
FEA Timber was the first company in Australia to commercialling produce sawn timber products from fast grown young eucalypt plantations utilising the Finnish HewSaw technology. Market demand as well as the range of products for this innovative new product marketed under the brand EcoAsh® is growing as research and testing continues to be carried out.
A Sustainable Product
EcoAsh® is an Australian plantation grown eucalypt hardwood that is planted and managed within a framework of environmental sustainability.
Resources
FEA identified an excellent opportunity to add value to eucalypt tree farms by sawing, drying and machining the material for sale into structual and appearance timber markets. The most suitable trees for this were older Eucalyptus nitens in Tasmania. This was to be the first fully commercial milling of this material in Australia. Other hardwoods currently available in the marketplace are generally either produced from Australian native forest, or imported.
In late 2002 FEA purchased a HewSaw R200 sawmill complex situated at Bell Bay in Tasmania, which was then sawing Radiata pine. The volume of Eucalyptus nitens sawn has steadily increased each year, with the volume of pine decreasing. In 2004 FEA completed structual testing of the material to Australian standards and launched the Ecoash® label. FEA has subsequently further invested in drying kilns and a moulder to bring these operations on site.
Plantation grade hardwood
Ecoash® comes with its own standard known as Plantation Grade Hardwood or PGH20S.
This is the result of a major structural testing program FEA undertook with consulting engineers PJ Yttrup & Assoc. Ongoing testing in our own laboratory ensures consistent structural quality.
EcoAsh® is suitable for a wide range of applications in commercial, industrial and domestic building such as studs, plates, bearers, joists and trusses.
Fibre Products
EA currently produces and markets its wood fibre products through SmartFibre Pty Ltd (SmartFibre Bell Bay), a modern export woodchip facility located at Bell Bay in North Eastern Tasmania. SmartFibre Bell Bay is the eco-friendly brand jointly owned by FEA and ITC Limited and was established in September 2003.
SmartFibre Bell Bay exports eucalypt hardwood and softwood woodchips to pulp and paper manufacturing customers in NE Asia. SmartFibre wood fibre products are used to produce some of the world’s finest quality paper and paper board.
The SmartFibre Bell Bay mill currently produces and exports on average 500,000 tonnes of wood fibre per annum.
SmartFibre Bell Bay sources its wood supplies from FEA’s plantation sawmill residues, eucalypt plantations managed by FEAP for its Project growers, FEA’s own plantations, State Government plantations, private tree farmers and native re-growth.
SmartFibre Bell Bay is part of the National SmartFibre Network, which aims, as plantation estates mature, to eventually export from seven facilities and ports around Australia, including Bell Bay in Tasmania, Brisbane and Gladstone in Queensland, Albany, Bunbury, and Esperance in WA and Portland in Victoria. SmartFibre also operates a marketing office in Tokyo, Japan.
A growing requirement to meet increasingly strict environmental standards and a strong demand for suitable wood-fibre products were the drivers behind the creation of SmartFibre.
SmartFibre has the internationally recognised ISO 14001 accreditation and internationally recognised certified wood sources which guarantees customers that SmartFibre is managed in a worlds best practice, environmentally responsible manner.
Geographical Spread
Australia
Board of Directors and Key Management
| Key Personnel | |
| Andrew White | Chief Executive Officer |
| Fergus Leicester | Chief Financial Officer & Company Secretary |
| Ross Barlow | General Manager |
| Chris Barnes | General Manager, Plantation Operations |
| Mike O’Shea | General Manager, Business Development |
| Andrew Wye | General Manager, SmartFibre |
| Doug Massey | General Manager, Strategic Development |
| Kristen McPhail | General Manager, Sales & Marketing |
| Board of Directors | |
| William Douglas Edwards | Non-Executive Director |
| Michael John Williams | Non-Executive Director |
| Desmond Patrick King | Non-Executive Director |
| Anthony Maxwell Cannon | Non-Executive Director |
| Vince Erasmus | Non-Executive |
Company Address233b Charles Street
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Additional Address/Key ContactFor broker, institutional and shareholder enquiries please contact FEA on: |
Most Recent Statement
17/10/08 - Annual Report to shareholders15/10/08 - Final Director`s Interest Notice
04/09/08 - Appendix 3B
03/09/08 - Full Year Statutory Accounts and Date of AGM
01/09/08 - FEA LLC Award
26/08/08 - FEA announces financial results for year ended 30 June 2008