Fletcher Challenge Forests invests in Danish company

By PAM GRAHAM

Fletcher Challenge Forests has bought into the Danish company pushing furniture made from New Zealand pine upmarket in Europe.

Fletcher had paid $1 million for 20 per cent of Zenia House to secure a supply chain into Europe, chief executive John Dell said.

Fletcher, which puts the sale of most of its forests to a shareholder vote on Friday, said 100 showrooms had committed to carry the Northland furniture range launched by Zenia last month.

Zenia will exclusively source pinus radiata from Fletcher and will initially market Fletcher's Taupo Clearwood brand to other users in Europe.

The partners have applied Danish design and finishes to clear pieces of New Zealand pine sawn to give a straight, tightly grained look.

The furniture range will sell for about 25 per cent more than Zenia's Baltic pine products.

"We are both allocating resource to develop the market," said Fletchers' director of sales and marketing Mark Eglinton.

Zenia was a management buyout breakaway from Club 8, which runs the global furniture chain Bo Concept, and the Zenia board will have a Club 8 director on it.

Fletcher exports wood panels to Europe for manufacture into the Zenia furniture components, but is yet to decide whether to invest $12 million to $15 million in facilities to make the components locally.

The company has also not yet decided whether the furniture range will be sold in New Zealand.

"At this stage it is a first step. We see this as developing a new market and we don't want to oversell it," said Dell.

Shareholders are widely expected to approve of the sale of Fletcher's forests at Friday's special meeting.

Overseas Investment Commission approval of the buyers was notified yesterday.