Aust Pacific Forest Management Pty Ltd (APFM)

Level 18, 307 Queen Street Brisbane Queensland Australia 4000

Tel: 07 3221 7750 Fax: 07 3221 8828 ACN: 105 116 569

APFM Overview

Worldwide demand for timber is strong and will grow with the population. Australia now imports around $4 b of

timber and timber products each year, with significant amounts coming from illegally logged rainforests.

The APFM forest management concept is based around our Australian invention, an automatic tree pruning machine

which keeps the knotty core of a tree to around 100 mm diameter by pruning the lower story as the tree grows. This

has considerable potential not only from a wealth generation viewpoint with a world-wide market but as a tool

which will revolutionise high-quality timber production, enhance carbon sequestration into a useful commodity,

and reliably audit 1) quality and quantity of millable timber in the plantation to allow trade in this commodity at

any stage of the growth process and 2) the amount of carbon captured.

Pruning the lower storey helps mitigate forest fires by a) separating grass fires from the canopy to prevent ignition

of fast-moving canopy flares and b) improving access for fire-fighters and their equipment.

Forest fires rage on a huge scale in plantations around the world. 130 million tonnes of carbon dioxide were dumped

into the atmosphere in the Victorian fires of 2003 and who knows how much from more recent conflagrations, with

unpruned plantations being badly affected. However, a real pollutant, particulate matter, is also poured into the

atmosphere in such events. Our mechanical limb-pruning head (which rapidly prunes with great precision and does

not ring-bark the tree) has been manufactured and successfully tested on saw-log forestry trees here in Queensland

with the co-operation of the State Department of Forestry. International patents for this device were granted to

our company, APFM. The only competition comes from manual pruning (world-wide industry practice) which is

expensive and involves major safety issues. One man can prune 100 trees a day, but our automatic tree-pruner can

prune and audit 2,000 trees in one 8 hour shift, and if necessary, work 3 shifts each day.

The mechanical limb-pruner, when built onto a computer-controlled, purpose-built transporter system, has a global

market potential of over $2.5 billion per year with other benefits as noted above. The machine has also gained a

great deal of support from the CSIRO because of the capability afforded to audit the quality and quantity of millable

timber in each tree as it is pruned ie the timber quality and quantity audit carried out in conjunction with each

3-year pruning will allow trading in trees which don’t have to be cut down to realise a fair market value and which

can, therefore, be allowed to mature for 30 or more years to the benefit of future generations. One tree-pruning

machine, in a 10-year lifespan, can treat trees to measurably sequestrate a million or more tonnes of carbon dioxide

into millable, high-value, knot-free lumber. Our projections are that, conservatively, worldwide demand for these

machines will be in excess of 300 new machines per year.

APFM, the owners of the technology, had been offered provisional forward contracts for lower-story limb-pruning

by the Tasmanian and Queensland Forestry Departments for 5 consecutive annual forestry plantings of 11,000

hectares of pine and eucalypt species, a total of 55,000 hectares, each with 3 pruning stages over 9 years, with the

value of those provisional contracts totaling around $75 million, however, Queensland Forests have since been

privatized and the intentions of the new owners are not yet known.

A significant benefit of pruning is that it allows the growth of clear wood which has a value of around 3 times that

of knotty wood.

A great deal of supporting information can be provided in addition to the business plan to bring this machine into

commercial production. A video clip shows the full-scale pruner head in action, and we would be delighted to give

a short presentation and answer any queries.

John McRobert BE (Civ)