3.0 Plantations
Fiber that is processed in our mill comes from legally harvested sources as confirmed by our national and international certifications.
Fiber that is processed in our mill comes from legally harvested sources as confirmed by our national and international certifications.
The total area of APRIL Group’s forest plantations in Indonesia accounts for less than one percent of the country’s total forest areas. APRIL Group manages its concessions with a rigorous approach to sustainable forest management as embodied in its SFMP.
According to Indonesian government data, the country has a total of 131 million hectares of forest area, with 70 million hectares of degraded forest designated by the government for production forest. Of this 70 million hectares of production forest, the government allocated 10 million hectares to Industrial Forest Plantation (HTI). The objective of production forest area management is to have competent entities manage and increase the productivity of this land.
In Riau province, peatland comprises 4 million hectares, or 45 percent of the province’s total land area, according to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.
The east coast of Sumatra is characterized by low-lying flatlands with coastal and riverine peat swamp forests and recent alluvial deposits. These environments are less productive to settle and develop for conventional agriculture, so traditional settlements have been confined to the accessible riverside periphery. As such, intensive land use and clear land use ownership have been lacking.
According to the 2005 data from the Indonesia National Council on Climate Change: Indonesia’s peatland annual CO2 emission due to peat fires is 55% or 470 MT. Peat fires release a greater amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) than fires in non-peat areas and are much harder to extinguish.
As well as preventing smoke haze that is hazardous to health, it is in APRIL Group’s commercial interest to prevent and suppress fire near and inside its concession areas as fire destroys plantation trees – APRIL Group’s main raw material for its pulp and paper production. Rather than using fire, we prepare land for planting with modern machinery.