Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Joseph Madzimure
17 September 2007
Harare — Timber producer Border Timbers Ltd is failing to meet its planting targets, as workers trade tree-planting jobs for gold panning in Mozambique.
Baboons also destroyed some trees at Chimanimani Estates in the Eastern Highlands. In a statement, the group said last week rampant absenteeism from work had curtailed most of their tree plantation expansion plans. Successive droughts and typhoon rains have also come in with their own fair share of problems, it said. Border Timbers said: "Shortages of labour in the Chimanimani plantations arising out of employees absenting themselves from work in favour of gold panning in Mozambique and diamond mining in the Marange area adversely affected the company's planting programme." For the first six months of 2007, "there was no baboon control operations carried out at the plantations.
"The decision of the extension of the derogation from Forest Stewardship Council to use papiol to control baboon damage is still pending. "A total of 174 hectares of pine and eucalyptus plantation was damaged by Cyclone Flavio at Charter, Sawerombe and Tilbury Estates," said the company.
Border Timbers is now trying hard to secure labour in areas as far as Masvingo, Chivhu and Buhera to help save the situation. The company added that total round-wood production for the year was below target and this was mainly on the eucalyptus species. The inability by sawmills to process big diameter eucalyptus saw logs resulted in the forestry division cutting back on harvesting. Pine and peeler log production was on target. But intensified efforts of outsourcing logs resulted in reasonable volume of logs being procured from outside and this effort will be pursued next year.
At Pauline factory division, the overall production for the factory was below forecast mainly because of reduced demand for blackboard products and power outages that became worse during the year. Border Timbers International, a subsidiary of the group, has successfully identified other higher margin products to replace the discontinued-engineered doors. "These new products will be exported to the regional and overseas markets. The factory was not spared from the unscheduled and numerous power outages and a significant volume of production was lost as a result," said the company. In its financial results for the year ended June 30 2007, the group recorded a net profit of $20 billion, up from $186 million. A turnover of $52 billion was achieved from the corresponding figure of $1,4 billion over the period under review.
Basic earnings per share rose to $466 from $1,85 reported prior year. Border Timbers is a division of Radar Holdings with the responsibility for the growing, harvesting and saw-milling of timber from an area covering 29 000 hectares of pine and eucalyptus plantations located in the Eastern Highlands.
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