JANT start up in the Gogol 1973

1973

JANT start up in the Gogol 1973

Japan New Guinea Timbers (known as JANT), a subsidiary of Honshu Paper Co Ltd, was granted a permit to harvest wood from the Gogol in July 1972. Much of the remainder of 1972 and 1973 was spent tooling up, developing substantial sawmill and wood chip mill facilities and logging roads. Wewak Timbers, in which there was a controlling interest by the New Zealand Company Fletcher Holdings, ran the sawmill part of the Gogol operation. Initial investment was US$ 4.2 million for roading and logging equipment and US$5.1 million for the chip mill, chip stockpiling loading and wharf facilities and for the chip transport vessel.

JANT roads for Gogol were much more sophisticated than those built previously by Wewak Timbers in the North Coast TRP. JANT appeared to be giving high priority to roading for pulpwood extraction and low priority to reforestation. Roads seemed to be “over-designed” without proper regard to environmental and ecological conditions, incurring also a later high maintenance cost.

Nine images are shown on the previous and this page of road construction by JANT that was underway in the Gogol in 1973. The extent and volume of the earthworks was massive.

Below: Madang is shown in early 1974. Madang airport is in the distance in the right hand photograph.

JANT pulpwood and Wewak Timbers sawmill facilities as they were in Madang in early 1974. The site covered 19 ha and was leased from the PNG Government initially for 50 years.

The first of two chippers was brought into production on 17 March 1974. The project was officially opened on 8 and 9 June 1974 as the first mixed tropical hardwood woodchip project of its type in the world. The chips were stockpiled from March until the first shipload of wood chips was sent to Honshu Paper Mills in Japan in June 1974, coinciding with the official opening.

Clause 13 of the 1971 Agreement between JANT and the Administration stated:

“The administration will endeavour to obtain an adequate area for reforestation to maintain the industry at a viable level. The Administration may make arrangements with the Company for Company participation in the reforestation on such terms and conditions as mutually agreeable. The terms and conditions may include, inter alia the utilization from the future plantations and the possible extent of the permit period.”

20,000 ha on a 10 to12-year rotation was estimated at the time to be required at Gogol for sustainable commercial supply of pulpwood to JANT based on experience from plantations elsewhere in lowlands PNG.

However, JANT and the Administrationa) never determined the optimum range of species for the local climate and soils of the project site given the specific end use objectives. Though June to November was usually dryer than the same season in New Britain, floods were a regular feature of the wet season in the Gogol. The silty clays and clay loams, seasonally inundated floodplains and swamps were unlike the edaphic conditions normally associated with natural occurrences of E. deglupta. In the Gogol, surface drainage was slow on the flat areas, and internal drainage was hampered nearly everywhere by heavy soil texture. After harvesting most of the existing rainforest the water table rose even more making the issue of waterlogging worse than what was indicated from the original land survey that was undertaken before the project started and while the area was still forested. A revised land suitability overlay to take this water table rise into account was not carried out before allocating areas for harvesting and reforestation. b) never introduced agroforestry systems combining wood crops and agricultural crops. Most of the landowners were not interested in reforestation with pulpwood or timber species as a sole post logging land use. Also, they were more interested in commercial agricultural development rather than in agroforestry. c) never considered a planting architecture other than a relatively widely spaced single-species planting in lines on minimally prepared ground. More intensive site preparation that in turn may have involved windrowing of all woody debris, deep ripping, cultivation and mounding should have been tried. An equal mix of two species such as E. deglupta and a legume tree like an Albizzia sp could have been tried.1

1 Such mixtures of a Eucalypt and Albizzia were proving very successful in bioenergy plantations being grown in Hawai‘i at the time.