Australian logging company Gunns goes into liquidation

Gunns' liquidator will widen an investigation into whether the Tasmanian timber business traded while insolvent
Miranda Gibson in her tree-top home looks over rainforest in Tasmania
An activist maintains a treetop vigil in a protest against logging in Tasmania. Photograph: Alan Lesheim


More than 80 people owed more than $750m by the 140-year-old Tasmanian business "resolved unanimously" to wind it up at a second creditors meeting, Daniel Bryant of administrator PPB Advisory told reporters.


The PPB report, which will be sent to Australia's corporate regulator for possible action against company directors, also stated that secured lenders, owed $446m, are unlikely to get all of their money back, with Gunns crippled by debts of around $3bn.


Gunns' liquidation is an ignominious moment for what was the largest hardwood sawmiller in the southern hemisphere.

The company is reviled by several environmental and community groups over its previous poisoning of native wildlife and its proposed $2.3bn pulp mill in Tasmania's Tamar Valley.


In 2004, Gunns launched a $6.5m lawsuit against environmentalists that opposed its logging operations, sparking furious protests in support of the so-called Gunns 20.

The case dragged on for six years until Gunns backed down and agreed to pay $155,000 towards the legal costs of the four remaining defendants.

In the same year, the company also announced it would leave native forest logging, but it wasn't enough to save it from collapse.



However, conservationists have warned the ANZ bank, Gunns' main secured creditor, not to push ahead with the pulp mill, which is the subject of an ongoing legal challenge.

"If ANZ takes any steps that support the construction of a pulp mill in the Tamar Valley, the alliance will campaign vigorously against ANZ at a higher level than has occurred in the past," No Pulp Mill Alliance's Lucy Landon-Lane said.