The Victorian Plantations Corporation (VPC) of Victoria, Australia, was established under the State Owned Enterprises Act in May 1993, and by June 1993 was declared a State Business Corporation.
The Corporation's functions and powers for the management of softwood and hardwood plantations were previously owned by the Victorian Government, and managed through the Forests Commission Victoria. The objective for establishing the Victorian Plantations Corporation was to create a statutory body to manage timber plantations:
to establish, maintain and manage timber plantations on land vested in or managed by the Corporation, to enter into, administer or manage agreements or licences relating to forest produce on land vested in or managed by the Corporation.
The VPC was later sold in 1998 to American based superannuation company Hancock Timber Resource Group for $550 million to become Hancock Victorian Plantations (HVP)
Victorian plantations history
There are very few native softwoods in Victoria, and those that do exist, like white cypress pine (Callitris glaucophylla), grow too slowly to be suitable for large scale commercial plantations.
From its earliest days in the 1830s, Victoria imported large quantities of softwoods, mostly from north America and Scandinavia. The need for cheaper and more reliable local sources for internal work, furniture and joinery was apparent.
Early foresters quickly discovered that the physical properties of native forest hardwoods were unsuitable for some applications and plantation-grown softwoods offered the chance to replace expensive imports of Baltic Pine, Oregon and other timbers with domestic supplies.
Pinus insignis (now called Pinus radiata), which is native to the central coast of California and Mexico, was first planted in gardens and windbreaks at Doncaster during the 1860s and grew well. It was sufficiently promising for commercial plantings to begin from 1887.
Initially, the planting goals were simply to rehabilitate land cleared during the gold rush, provide some timber and avoid the costs and unreliability of imported timber, generate some revenue and create jobs in local sawmills.
Experimental pine plantations were established under the stewardship of John Johnstone, the Victorian Superintendent of Plantations. These were at Frankston and Harcourt (1909), Wilsons Promontory (1910), Bright (1916), Port Campbell/Waarre (1919), Anglesea (1923) and Mount Difficult (1925). The largest plot was some 2,500 acres associated with the new McLeod Prison farm on French Island (1911). However, nearly all these plantings failed due to poor soil and site conditions, but valuable silvicultural lessons were learned. The earlier success of radiata pine had partly given rise to the fallacy that it could grow anywhere.
Planting activity once picked up again by the Forests Commission Victoria (FCV) in the 1930s with unemployment relief schemes during the Great Depression Commercial financial returns became a more important objective following increased investment with the plantations expansion program.
The war years saw activity again fall away sharply, but afterwards there was a renewed focus on developing native forests in eastern Victoria owing to the conclusion of the 1939 fire salvage and to provide timber for post-war housing construction. The Strzelecki Ranges reforestation program got underway in the 1930s with planting of both softwoods and hardwoods on abandoned farmland.
In 1949 the Commonwealth Forestry and Timber Bureau proposed a national planting program to make Australia more self-reliant in timber products after the shortages experienced during the war.
A new Ministerial Australian Forestry Council was formed in 1964 with one of its first decisions being to further raise the national softwood target, with the Commonwealth agreeing to provide loan monies to the States to plant 30,000 hectares of softwoods per year for 35 years. Victoria took up the challenge by establishing and maintaining its plantations at nearly half the average cost of the other States.
APM Forests (APMF) was formed in 1951 with the primary aim of supplying pulpwood to the Maryvale Mill in the LaTrobe Valley through the establishment of plantations and co-ordination of harvesting and transport. The company also invested heavily in plantations in the Strzelecki’s under the stewardship of Norwegian forester Bjarn Dahl.