What is Fiji Hardwood doing to ensure sustainability of the mahogany industry?

Our General Manager, Mr Semi Dranibaka, answers the question- “How important is sustainability for Fiji Hardwood Corporation?” in the video below.

He talked about the total number of hectares harvested so far and what FHCL is doing to ensure that mahogany remains sustainable for future generations of landowners and other stakeholders.

TRANSCRIPTION BELOW

At Fiji Hardwood we have a total of 75,225 hectares of estate, which means leased by Fiji Hardwood. Out of that 75,000 hectares, we have only 41,000 hectares of matured mahogany stock, which is purely mahogany stock. When you talk about sustainability, how sustainable is the mahogany stock that you have, that will take you in perpetuity, which means the resource is still available for the future generation.

So at the moment, out of that 41,000 hectares of mahogany, we have only harvested 5,000 hectares since harvesting from 2003. So it has been 20 years of harvesting, but we’ve only harvested 5,000 hectares out of that 41,000. Meaning that we still have a lot of mahogany stock that are available.

We are doing replanting back all those harvested areas, the 5,000 hectares, meaning that we still have our stock of mahogany on that 41,000 hectares. But we need to start harvesting because mahogany tends to also over mature. When you have your mahogany over mature, meaning it is susceptible to disease, susceptible to rot or decay.

So we need to harvest our trees and replant back to get new trees. And sustainability meaning you have to harvest and you replant and your resources is available for the future generation. So at the moment, we want to get our production.

Right now our production annually is around 40,000. But our production can go right up to 100,000 cubic meters per year. So basically we want our resource to be sustainable, meaning it will be there for the next 30 or 40 years for the future generation.