Receiver seeks CNIF managers

By PAM GRAHAM

There has been some progress since the "under new management" sign was posted on the huge central North Island forests last year.

Advertisements this week for a "small select team" in a "lifestyle location" were for senior managers for the forests, Ferrier Hodgson receiver Michael Stiassny said yesterday.

The receiver is shifting management of the forests from Fletcher Challenge Forests to a new team and is separately setting up a log export company with Carter Holt Harvey, which is open to other participants.

Stiassny said last year that Fletcher Forests' management of the estate was expected to end and the new arrangements would be separate to the log export initiative.

Fletcher Forests said the financial impact on it of the "structured transition" that was still being worked through would be at the bottom end of a $10 million to $20 million range.

"We are working with Fletchers. They are going to provide some services but not all of them," Stiassny said.

The jobs advertised were for a sales manager, supply chain manager, distribution and logistics manager, inventory and distribution scheduler, operations scheduler, demand planner and financial accountant.

The mundane-sounding statements are the latest shift in control of a resource that dominates the central North Island and is still for sale.

The Government sold cutting rights to a partnership between Fletcher Challenge and Chinese investment company Citic in 1996 which went into receivership in February 2001. A plan by Citic and Fletcher Forests to buy the forests back last year failed.

Fletcher is selling its own forests to focus on marketing, distribution and processing businesses. It is not joining the export log initiative just yet.