Indonesian paper manufacturing giant April has declared it is fully environmentally friendly and will now be ramping up its business in Australia. Two months ago following consultation with NGOs including Greenpeace and WWF the company added High Carbon Stock to its High Conservation Value assessments under its updated Sustainable Forest management Policy SFMP2 and was awarded PEFC certification. According to Goh Lin Piao, managing director of sustainability for April, this means that the NGOs are now supportive of April’s environmental strategy. A statement from WWF says, “WWF welcomes April’s new deforestation moratorium.” Product manufactured by April for the Australian market is supplied by BJ Ball, including both copy paper and commercial grades. Stephen Gates, country manager for April says, “We will now be seeking to expand our market share, and will be launching new products for commercial printers. “The introduction of SFMP2 and its support by the NGOs means that printers will be able to use the paper with confidence knowing that there will be no environmental issues.” Tony Bertrand, marketing director at BJ Ball says, “SMFP2 means integrity. April papers are high quality and available at a competitive price and can now be shown to be environmentally-friendly, in fact April goes above and beyond what is required.”
April aiming to expand: (l-r) Tony Bertrand, marketing manager BJ Ball; Stephen Gates, Australia country manager, April; Goh Lin Piao, managing director Sustainability, April
April will be launching a new paper manufacturing line next year PM3 which will pump out some 300,000 tonnes a year at 1.9km an hour. The company is also adding two new paper lines at its Chinese mills, which will produce an extra 1.9 million tonnes of product year. April has been on a determined environmental journey since 2005, working with NGOs to ensure its practices are sustainable and accepted as such. It is committed to a 1:1 plantation to conservation ratio (The Indonesian government only requires 70:30), and in 2014 it created SFMP and launched an independent stakeholder advisory committee (SAC) to provide advice and scrutiny of the SFMP. April has some 90,000 staff. Its main mill in Sumatra has a production capacity of 820,000 tonnes of paper a year, and its China mill can produce 450,000 tonnes per year. It has one million hectares of concessions in Indonesia of which some 480,000ha are used for plantations, which equates to 0.4 per cent of Indonesia’s forest. The company is a serious economic force in the Riau region, where it makes up 6.9 per cent of the area’s GDP. It is ploughing money into education, helping to build 96 public schools and providing more than 17,000 scholarships. It supports local entrepreneurs, farmers and community livelihood projects and runs a major health programme.
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