Johannesburg — The managers at York seem to be getting it right, as the transformation of the former Tucker family-controlled forest-products business into Africa's largest forestry and timber milling company is taking hold.

The main issue in the sawn-timber industry has been -- and will remain for the foreseeable future -- a sustainable supply of raw material. The simple reason is that land for pine-log production is oversubscribed and there is only so much that biotechnology and efficiency can do about it.

A serious complication is that SA's main log supplier is state-owned Komatiland -- the break-up of which seems to be permanently on hold after three failed privatisation bids.

For a business utterly dependent on logs, there was nothing else to do but grow your own or, as in the case of York, to acquire a forestry operation. Enter Global Forest Products, which came on the market after its bid for Komatiland failed.

Now land claims on 45% of York's forestry operations mean it faces a new threat to its carefully constructed vertically integrated operation.

But corporate services director Gay Mokoena has a plan. He says York's model will result in it leasing back land handed over in terms of land claims for three growing cycles, that is, about 75 years. The new cost will be covered by interest earned on the market-related compensation paid to the company by the state.

It sounds like a great plan, provided everyone, particularly a government under pressure to deliver on land reform, co-operates.

York should ensure it does indeed receive market-related prices, preferably recalculated after the terms of land hand-over deals have been struck.

The Bottom Line is Edited By Edward West