Tiong family adds to New Zealand East Coast forests

The New Zealand Overseas Investment Office has approved the sale and purchase of about 10,000-12,000 hectares of forested land in the East Coast between two foreign owners. The purchaser is the owner of Ernslaw One Ltd.

The seller, an Australia trust company, has been given clearance to sell five forestry sites in the Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay regions to the Tiong Family of Malaysia, for $95 million. Merriwa Forest is in Hawke’s Bay while the other four - Waiau, West Ho, Moonlight, and Tolaga Forests are in the Gisborne area. The newly-acquired forests will add a sustainable harvest of 250,000 cubic metres a year to Ernslaw’s annual cut. The new forests are of an age class that means they have only had limited harvesting up to now.
The Tiong family are, of course, owners of Ernslaw One Ltd, a company led by Thomas Song here and well known to anyone in forestry, with forestry and wood processing operations in several key forestry regions throughout New Zealand. Mr Song has been reported as saying that the company is now looking for about four new forestry and cartage crews. It preferred to source people locally but was finding experienced crews were in short supply now.