VIETNAM
Deforestation, reforestation and industrial plantations
by Chris Lang

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GFA Terra Systems is a German consulting firm, with its headquarters in Hamburg. Founded in 1982, the current company is the result of a merger between GFA Agrar and LUSO Consult, and is part of the GFA LUSO Group. GFA Terra Systems works in the fields of agriculture, forestry and rural development. The company is divided into five regional departments covering: Africa; Asia; Europe; Latin America and the Caribbean; and Maghreb and the Middle East (GFA www 5).

GFA has worked on three KfW-funded reforestation projects in Vietnam, and the ADB's Forestry Sector Project. (See section on International Support, above.)

Jaakko Poyry is the world’s largest forestry and engineering consulting firm. (See report on Thailand for a profile of Jaakko Poyry.)

Jaakko Poyry played an important role in the development of the Bai Bang pulp and paper mill and held the majority share of the consortium, Scanmanagement, that won the lucrative SIDA-funded contract to run the mill. (See section on Bai Bang, above.)

In addition to Bai Bang, Jaakko Poyry won the following contracts in Vietnam between 1980 and 1992:

1992: Agroforestry development and extension (Sida-funded);

1992: Part of Tropical Forestry Action Plan (FAO-funded);

1991: Cogido and Cogivina Paper Mills – Environmental project;

1990: Ministry of Forestry – Rural and environment project;

1987: Bai Bang – Plantation and Soil Conservation project (Sida-funded);

1987: Bai Bang – Transport project (Sida-funded);

1987: VPSU-Vipimex – Soil conservation training course;

1985: Cogido and Cogivina Paper Mills – rehabilitation of mills;

1982: Ministry of Forestry – Technical assistance in the development of forestry organisations;

1980: Ministry of Light Industry – Technical Assistance in the development of a pulp and paper mill project (Jaakko Poyry no date).

Orgut has worked as consultant on several forestry projects in Vietnam, including the following:

• Support to the Social Forestry and Nature Conservation Project in Nghe An Province: EU funding, started in 1997.

• The UNDP Global Programme on Forests (PROFOR): UNDP funding, started in 1998. Orgut assisted MARD in designing the project and has a long-term Field Adviser (Hans Warfvinge) as well as national consultants working on the project.

• Orgut provides consultancy services to MARD relating to meetings in the International Support Group.

• Vietnam-Sweden Forestry Cooperation Programme: Sida funding, 1991-994.

• Orgut consultants worked on the Vietnamese Forestry Sector Review (1989-1991), part of Vietnam's TFAP.

Elof Hansson is the biggest Swedish trading firm, with its headquarters in Gothenburg. In 2001, the company finalised a contract to supply equipment to the expansion of the Bai Bang pulp and paper mill. Elof Hansson prepared a bid representing Swedish industry for the expansion of the Bai Bang mill (Sida 1998: 21).

Elof Hansson has also negotiated an agreement between Sunds Defibrator (represented by Hansson) and a group of Vietnamese businesses. Sunds Defibrator is looking to win contracts on 40 fibreboard mills proposed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development for remote areas of Vietnam. According to Sida, "Plantation forestry to support the fiber board factories will be modeled after the plantations created in the Swedish-supported forestry program connected to the Bai Bang project" (Sida 1998: 21).

The Elof Hansson group employs more than 400 people and total business volume is more than US$700 million (Elof Hansson www 1)

Elof Hansson produces no goods of its own, but deals in imports and exports of forest products (pulp, paper and timber), industrial products (machinery, building materials and steel) and consumer products (home electronics and electrical household appliances) (Elof Hansson www 1) (Wolsfeld no date).

Elof Hansson founded the company in Hamburg in 1987 and moved to Sweden in 1914 at the start of World War I. From the start, the company sold pulp overseas, including to Japan and Latin America. Through its contacts with agents, banks and customers, in these countries, the company was well positioned to "create new opportunities for manufacturers of typical Swedish export products," according to the company's web-site. Since 1945, the company has established new markets in China, India, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe (Elof Hansson www 1).

Through a subsidiary in New York, Elof Hansson Inc, the company became one the leading exporters of North American pulp, exporting mainly to Europe, Latin America and the Far East (Elof Hansson www 1).

The company supplied about 500,000 tons of pulp and 500,000 tons of paper and board each year. The company has subsidiaries in New York, Jakarta, Hong Kong, London, Shanghai, Beijing, Sydney, Chennai, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Mexico City. Elof Hansson sells paper and board in almost 100 countries. The biggest paper and board sales units of the group are in Gothenburg and New York. The Paper Division in Gothenburg is divided into four marketing units:

• Latin America
• Africa (except French West Africa) and Middle East
• French West Africa
• Asia and Australia (Elof Hansson www 1).

The company's president in Thomas Pettersson.

In Vietnam, the company has offices in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi which sell pulp and paper machinery in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (Elof Hansson www 1).

In 1995, Elof Hansson was accused of being involved in a price fixing cartel on imported Japanese fax paper sold in the US from August 1991 to March 1992 (US Department of Justice 1995).

CSIRO's Division of Forest Research began in 1921 as the Australian Government's Commonwealth Forestry Bureau, and was incorporated within CSIRO in 1975. The organisation has played an important role in promoting fast-growing tree plantations in the Mekong region. (See Lang 1996b and 2000 for profiles of CSIRO.)

In 1989 Stephen Midgley of CSIRO travelled to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia on a technical advisory visit for the Australian Tree Seed Centre. Midgley recommended that Australia should continue to provide technical literature, and establish seed orchards in Vietnam. "It would seem logical that Australia, with the appropriate scientific expertise and genetic material, could make a unique contribution in this regard," he wrote (Midgley 1989: 29).

ACIAR was established in 1982, "to mobilize Australia's research expertise to help solve problems limiting agricultural production in developing countries" (ACIAR 1991: 3). ACIAR contracts scientific organisations in Australia to set up collaborative research projects on problems of "mutual interest" with counterparts in other countries. It also aims to allocate funds to conduct research to benefit from Australia's tree genetic resource "that gives Australian scientists a comparative advantage in the search for appropriate species for the reforestation effort in degraded tropical environments" (Boland and Turnbull 1989: 13).

Established in 1948, as the Colonial Development Corporation, CDC's duty was to carry out projects "for developing resources of colonial territories" (Competition Commission www 1). In 1963 CDC became the Commonwealth Development Corporation and its remit was expanded to apply to the Commonwealth countries. Its remit was later further expanded to cover overseas countries generally and its role was redefined as being "to assist overseas countries in the development of their economies" (Competition Commission www 1). (See report on Thailand for a profile of CDC.)

In Vietnam, CDC has shares in the following companies:

• Vietnam Sucrerie Bourbon Tay Ninh (Sugar mill and refinery); and
• Vietnam Advanced Building Systems Ltd (Pre-engineered steel building production) (CDC no date b).

The CTFT is a department of the French foreign aid agency Centre de Cooperation Internationale en

Recherche Agronomique pour la Developpement, and has its origins in French colonial tropical forestry agencies. (National Research Council 1991: 119). In 1916, France set up a programme to cover France's needs for aviation-quality timbers from the tropics. In 1923, the Colonial Forestry Service was established. In 1924, a colonial forestry research institute at Nogent-sur-Marne was established. The CTFT had its roots in the Section Technique Forestiere at Nogent (Bedel and Brown 1998).

In 1948, the CTFT was established to undertake research in tropical forestry. Its mandate was to undertake research on colonial forestry and timber, partly to help meet the demand generated by post-second world war reconstruction. The centre worked on several industrial projects, including work on sawn timber production in Cameroon and plywood in Gabon. In 1963, the Burea des Etudes Techniques (BET) was established within the CTFT leading to the involvement in many projects in former colonies, including forest inventories, training programmes, plantations projects, paper mills and silvicultural studies (Bedel and Brown 1998).

In 1984, CTFT was incorporated into CIRAD (Centre de Cooperation Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Developpement) as a new department (Bedel and Brown 1998).

CTFT concentrates on a small range of mainly industrial species, including eucalyptus, Pinus caribaea, Tectona grandis, Gmelina arborea, Acacia mangium and A. auriculiformis (National Research Council 1991: 119). CTFT (along with CSIRO and other forestry research institutions) carried out research in the early 1970s into the pulping of mixed tropical hardwoods, research that was to have a major impact on both the pulp and paper industry and forest cover in the tropics.

In Vietnam, in the mid-1990s, CTFT was acting as technical advisor on an ambitious joint venture between a French company, VMH, and Liksin, a Vietnamese printing and paper company. The total proposed investment was US$17 billion, which would have included new pulp mills, establishment of new port facilities, as well as a huge expansion in raw material plantations. The project planned to establish 200,000 hectares of Eucalyptus plantations in the south and central highlands of Vietnam. The CTFT input began in early 1990 and involved the establishment of a research and training centre, in collaboration with the Forest Science Institute of Vietnam (Midgley 1989: 51). 

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