Saw-miller sore over prices
Bob Humphries, owner of the big Cann River sawmill, is sore over new prices for logs and wants the government to reduce royalty prices to below cost price . He says demand for native forest timber is falling and they can’t get as much for sawn timber any more. After decades of receiving welfare in the form of cheap resources and industry assistance it must be hard to get back into the world of commercial realism.
He complained that VicForests, which is supposed to look at commercial aspects, has gone and ‘lifted the price of logs on a downward spiralling market’.
VicForests said it would review the royalties but also said some parts of the building industry were improving. It also justified the new price for logs so as to give a fair return to the Victorian taxpayer.