Feature Article

Conservationists at the action against Ta Ann. Picture:  Matthew Newton Source: The Australian

The campaign launched yesterday by groups including Markets for Change and headed by a former state Greens leader will run in Japan and Australia and try to put pressure on customers of the Malaysian-based Tasmanian flooring veneer-maker Ta Ann.

The group is using a website – taann.com.au – that is very close to the name of the company’s site, and says it is confident of replicating the success of a similar campaign in Japan that contributed to Gunns Ltd’s decision to quit native forest woodchipping.

Tasmanian Premier Lara Giddings has attacked the campaign as “absolutely shameful” and has provided her personal endorsement of Ta Ann’s environmental credentials.

However, former Greens leader Peg Putt, now a consultant with Markets for Change, said Ta Ann was the “driver” for the logging of 1950ha of Tasmanian native forests that were initially promised for federal protection.

These forests were excised from a conservation agreement between the Gillard and Giddings governments last month after an independent process found they could not be protected without reneging on existing contracts. Ms Putt, who visited Japan late last year to begin lobbying Ta Ann’s customers, mostly makers and purchasers of flooring for new homes, said the company was misleading the market by claiming to sell “eco-friendly” veneers.

“Ta Ann can be part of the solution and we will support them — or they can continue to hold fast to being part of the problem and to trying to greenwash their credentials,” Ms Putt said.

“We will hound them until they make the change that will be better for the forests, better for their company and meet the expectations of their Japanese customers,” she said.

“Ta Ann are the driving force behind the failed moratorium on logging and the breach of the intergovernmental agreement on forests.”

The company, which has contracts for the supply of up to 265,000m a year of peeler logs, insists this is sourced only from regrowth forests and constitutes timber that would otherwise be wood-chipped.

Ta Ann, which has two Tasmanian veneer mills, in the Huon Valley and in Smithton, employing 160 people, would not comment further yesterday.

But it was staunchly defended by Ms Giddings. “It’s absolutely shameful what Markets for Change and Peg Putt are doing in relation to Ta Ann,” she said.

The Premier said she had visited the company’s Malaysian headquarters and found its commitment to the environment to be genuine. “Ta Ann is a respected company around the world,” Ms Giddings said. “It is absolutely wrong what Markets for Change are doing in trying to undermine this important forest company.”

The protest website features images taken yesterday of protesters in logged forests holding banners in Japanese, targeting key Ta Ann customers Panasonic, Daiwa House, Sekisui House and Eidai.

In the case of Daiwa, it also features a cardboard cut-out of the company’s mascot, Daiwa Man, alongside felled forest in the Picton Valley south of Hobart.

The website urges people to demand Ta Ann source its Tasmanian timber from outside the 572,000ha they regard as high-conservation value forest.

This latest controversy comes amid more bad news for the state’s beleaguered timber industry. Hobart-based sawmiller McKay Timber temporarily stood down 30 workers citing a lack of market for wood residues.