A Hart for Gunns?

Lindsay Tuffin

IS Gunns is doing a deal with Graeme Hart for the pulp mill and Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon has gone to NZ to assure Carter Holt that it has the support of the Tasmanian Government and, more particularly, Forestry Tasmania. Did any Forestry managers go too?

Is there a sense of urgency here because certain approvals require the pulp mill project get going by June?
(1) New Zealand’s richest man, Graeme Hart, visited John Gay in Launceston in the first week of May. Hart is the billionaire behind Australasian giant Carter Holt Harvey (The Australian last week).

(2) Paul Lennon suddenly flew to NZ this week.

(3) Hart is on the verge of seizing a dominant position in Australia’s softwood structural timber market after Carter Holt Harvey moved to buy the Australian assets of US timber giant Weyerhaeuser (Aust Financial Review, May 13).

(4) Hart decided to offload Carter Holt’s wood products division six months ago despite various competition inquiries and the global credit crunch. Carter Holt is believed to have attracted interest from Gunns, Japan’s Sumitomo Forestry Company, Boral, New Zealand’s Fletcher Buildings, and private equity firms CVC Asia-Pacific and the Blackstone Group, although there is some doubt about whether Hart’s $2 billion price tag is realistic. (Aust Financial Review May 5).

(5) Ben Gray, the Harvard-educated son of former Tasmanian premier and current Gunns director Robin Gray, unsuccesfully bid for Carter Holt a couple of year’s ago with Texas Pacific Group.