Furniture makers expect price rise

By ANNE BESTON and NZPA

An Auckland furniture retailer says the price of rimu furniture will almost certainly rise after the Government's announcement of an end to rimu logging on Crown-owned land by 2002.

Roger Butcher, owner of Furniture City, received calls from two suppliers yesterday panicked by the decision.

One had said his prices would have to rise by 20 per cent and Mr Butcher said stores had no option but to pass that on. "We've got to pay our rent and our employees, just like everyone else."

More than 80 per cent of Furniture City's stock was domestically made, said Mr Butcher. Retailers and manufacturers had been trying to interest customers in other woods but with limited success.

"We've been trying with red beech and other domestic products, but the public rejects them. I think people will only change when the price of rimu gets so high they can't afford it," he said.

Hastings furniture manufacturer Bruce Drummond, owner of Millbrook Furniture, which employs about 30 people and makes most of its lines from rimu, said pure economics meant rimu furniture would become more expensive.

"We're going to have to get our skates on and look at other timbers," he said. "But I think the phase-out has been too fast. We could have handled three to four years, but the thing I'm most concerned about at the moment is pressure on employment."

The Minister Responsible for Timberlands West Coast and the Minister of Forestry, Pete Hodgson, entered the war of words yesterday over how many job losses would result from the rimu decision.

He said Timberlands had 29 people employed in native forest logging and only one sawmill on the West Coast, which employed 80 people, milled rimu. He estimated 60 jobs in total would go on the Coast and that was nowhere near the "hundreds of job losses being touted by the Government's more hysterical critics."

He said the impact on the furniture industry was difficult to estimate but claims of 4000 job losses were grossly inflated.

Meanwhile, the West Coast looks almost certain to accept the Government's $120 million economic development offer as compensation.

Buller Mayor Pat O'Dea said yesterday that the Government required an answer by the end of June, but local councils had to finalise how the money would be administered.

The Government had made a political decision, not a conservation one, he said. He ridiculed suggestions that West Coasters might find new jobs in tourism.

"It's hard to turn a bushman into a wine waiter overnight."