UPM-Kymmene defends link APRIL

UPM-Kymmene defends link APRIL

HELSINKI (Reuters): Finnish forest industry group UPM-Kymmene
defended on Thursday its alliance with Indonesian paper maker
APRIL against environmental groups insisting that it pull out of
cooperation with the Southeast Asian group.

"The sharing of best practices and transfer of knowledge will
ensure that ... development is carried out to the highest
environmental standards," UPM officials told a news conference.

Environmentalists in Finland, including the Finnish section of
the Friends of the Earth, this week stepped up a campaign to halt
UPM-Kymmene's joint venture with Singapore-based APRIL (Asia
Pacific Resources International Holding)[ARH.N].

UPM-Kymmene and APRIL in September this year set a joint
venture for fine-paper operations giving UPM-Kymmene access to
the fast-growing Asian paper market.

The project has become a red cloth for those here who say that
APRIL's forestry spoils natural rain forests and allege that the
Indonesian group tramples indigenous people's land rights and
discriminates against organized labor.

UPM-Kymmene on Thursday dismissed the charges and painted a
picture of an unfaltering process of globalization leading to
greater prosperity and higher environmental standards, and it
even linked paper consumption to the expanding democracy.

"Crucially, the growing interdependence of international
business offers the prospect of improving environmental and
social sustainability all around the world. The new partnership
should be seen in this context," UPM said in a statement.

To meet some of the demand generated by rapid long-term
economic growth in China and elsewhere in Asia, just 1.5 percent
of permanent forestland in Indonesia would be used for pulp and
paper operations, UPM-Kymmene said.

The forests culled by APRIL under a government concession in
Riau, Sumatra, are "logged-over and degraded natural forests from
which the largest and most valuable trees have already been
removed for other purposes by other parties," UPM said.

But it also pledged to have a full environmental audit of
APRIL's forestry operations in Riau made by an internationally
known outside specialist with the aim of drawing up a detailed
plan for forestry certification.

UPM-Kymmene moreover said that plantation forestry reduces the
area needed to produce wood to one sixth of what it would be if
producers logged natural forests.

"Wood raw material for a 750,000 t/a pulp mill, for example in
Riau, can be sustainable supplied from a tree plantation of some
100,000 hectares, which is only one tenth of the forest area
needed for such a mill in Scandinavia," UPM-Kymmene said.

The company said it was committed in its alliance with APRIL
to international environmental norms, that APRIL's pulp and paper
mills were built to the latest Scandinavian environmental
standards and that APRIL had a strict no-burn policy in its
forests.

UPM-Kymmene defended the social record of its partner, saying
that it provides important infrastructure, pays above-average
wages, allows worker associations and does not move traditional
inhabitants from its land concessions.