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In 2016 over quarter of a million tonnes of wood chips were exported from Bell Bay Wharf 6. This does not include exports from Forico or from Burnie. 144,738 tonnes were exported from BB6 for the whole of 2015. The low Australian dollar is causing a boom in wood chip exports. These woodchips go to pulp mills in Taiwan, Japan and China. Forestry Tasmania is probably undercutting Forico and Smartfibre chips out of Tasmania. TAP is tracking the Wharf 6 exports because TasPorts covers-up native wood chip exports from Tasmania. Artec Bell Bay was originally set-up by Forestry Tasmania who supplied the land, the port and the all the trees to a once small Northern Tasmanian saw miller. This is similar to the Southwood operation in the Huon and at Smithton where FT provided the land, the factories and even the electricity to Ta Ann who then wrote their own wood supply contracts for 15 years in advance.
For those interested in how Forestry Tasmania systematically defrauded the State of Tasmania of millions of dollars, we recommend a document written by John Hawkins and tabled into Hansard by Andrew Wilkie. Wilkie was forced to take this action because certain individuals in Tasmania are suppressing information on massive corruption in FT by threatening legal action. This is probably why Paul Harriss was forced to resign. The Burnie area is also flooded with log trucks, woodchip piles and large log yards like the old Tioxide site at Heybridge on the Bass Highway near Burnie. The export of huge amounts of wood chips year after year has pushed the ecology of Tasmania to collapse. FT are destroying the forests of Tasmania and they are doing it at a financial loss to the State. At left is the 82,000 tonne Concordia bulk wood chip 'supertanker' made in 2011. It can export 40,000 tonnes of wood chips compared to an average of 10,000 tonnes for the smaller vessels on the Tasmania-Asia wood chip route. There is a 'revolving door' between TasPorts and Forestry Tasmania that needs more investigation.
