4.2.1. Outside the concession areas

The effects of APRIL's activities are not restricted to only the concession areas. The concession areas are not bountiful enough to satisfy the tree demand of the pulp plant on their own. Firstly, the pulp plant has been established in Riau before the plantations had been planted. The first harvest of acacia trees is to be logged after the turn of the millennium. If the planting goes ahead as planned, APRIL's pulp plant could run on plantation trees at the earliest around 2007-2008 (PPI 6/98).

Before APRIL can run on its own plantation wood, over 25 000 ha of forest will have to be clear-cut annually for its pulp kettle. [APRIL's concession forests yield around 65-200 m3 of wood per hectare, of which 84 % on average is used to make pulp. The average pulp yield from a clear-cut hectare of rainforest is supposedly e.g. 140 m3, which corresponds to 35 tonnes of pulp. Hence, in order to fulfil the annual production capacity of 750 000 tonnes of pulp, around 21 400 ha of forest would need to be logged. The planned increase to a production capacity of 1 000 000 tn/a would mean that around 28 600 ha of forest would have to be cut down.] The rainforest that will be logged to make way for the plantations will not be enough to meet this demand, and the company will therefore need to procure wood from outside areas as well. APRIL is already buying wood from outside its concession areas, e.g. from oil palm plantation which also play a key role in the destruction of the rainforests (meeting with representatives of APRIL, Helsinki, Dec. 17, 1997), even though journalists have been told otherwise (Helsingin Sanomat, Oct. 24, 1997). A likely seller of wood is APRIL's sister company in the RGM-group, the palm oil producing PI Inti Indosawit, which is very active in Riau.

APRIL has announced that it plans to set up 20 000 ha of plantations outside of its concession areas by encouraging people to participate in a scheme in which the company establishes the plantation on local land that is then taken care of by the inhabitants (HTR). The owner receives 40 % of the profits from the logging. 4000 ha of land had been cleared in the spring of 1998 under this programme (SGS, 1998). A similar scheme at APRIL's Indorayon plant in North Sumatra led to conflicts between the company and the locals as the locals felt that they were not getting a fair share of the profits (Tjahjono, 1998). In the end, however, APRIL can increase its wood procurement area over and beyond its concession areas.