Canberra has put close to SI$60 million into the fund that bought Kolombangara Forest Products and is now paying to train the plantation’s heavy machinery operators. That is according to the Australian High Commission in Honiara, which announced the training programme and an upgraded Early Learning Centre on 14 August, nine months after New Forests completed its purchase of the company.
“In Solomon Islands, forest coverage is around 90%, and most of the country’s revenue comes from logging, with limited development of downstream products,” Christina Gabuvai told China Daily in August 2025. The country’s chief forester was among eleven forestry officers who spent time in Zhejiang and Henan on a seminar Beijing set up, the latest instance of its timber and bamboo diplomacy in the Pacific.
China took 2.37 million cubic metres of logs from Solomon Islands in 2019 and 1.44 million in 2022, its customs data shows, and by 2025 the figure was 1.09 million, 31 per cent fewer than a year earlier, a fall of 54 per cent across six years by Wood Central’s calculation from the same series. The Asian Development Bank counts logging output at 1.60 million cubic metres in 2022 after a 22.4 per cent fall it calls the sharpest on record, against a sustainable level earlier studies set at 250,000 cubic metres a year, and its baseline runs output down to an average of 1.15 million cubic metres a year through 2033.
Tropical Asia Forest Fund 2, the New Forests vehicle that bought KFPL, took the Australian money through the Australian Climate Finance Partnership, which the same bank manages, and the bank also took a 492 million Australian dollar, four-year commitment from Pat Conroy and Penny Wong in May 2024, when the Minister for International Development and the Pacific called it one of several regional banks “unwittingly caught in a contest” for influence.
KFPL runs 14,000 hectares of hardwood plantation inside a 40,000-hectare estate on Kolombangara, in Western Province, with the other 26,000 hectares held as natural forest, and the High Commission calls it the country’s only internationally certified sustainable forestry plantation. The company holds Forest Stewardship Council certification under licence code FSC-C013138 and counts 200 full-time staff and 800 contractors.
“This targeted training will give our workforce the skills to operate safely and efficiently in demanding conditions,” Edwin Schramm said. The general manager of KFPL will put the Australian money into on-site courses in vehicle and heavy machinery operation and maintenance, from a partner that had already put more than $5 million into the company through Strongim Bisnis for site access, tourism, and the country’s first wooden pallet line.
“It creates jobs, supports landowner incomes and provides a sustainable alternative to logging natural forests,” Jeff Roach said of plantation forestry. Rod Hilton, his predecessor as Australia’s High Commissioner, attended the 3 October signing ceremony in Honiara, and the High Commission’s statement on the ceremony counted the SI$60 million as part of what enabled the transaction, a deal Hilton called New Forests’ first investment in the Pacific.
New Forests completed the purchase on 31 October, and the company’s own site now lists New Forests at 75 per cent, Kolombangara Island Investment Limited at 20 per cent, and the Investment Corporation of Solomon Islands at 5 per cent. “Some of the initiatives include modernising forest operations, improving road and port facilities, strengthening community engagement, and implementing training programs for workers,” the manager’s 12 November release states.
“You are no longer outsiders, you are partners, co-owners of KFPL,” Jeremiah Manele said. The Solomon Islands Prime Minister handed the landowners their share certificate at Ringi on 11 November, telling them Elite Idea Limited had decided in 2023 and 2024 to sell its shares, and Frank Wickham, the ICSI chair, told the same crowd the state corporation had held 40 per cent before the transfer.
“This is not just a commercial milestone. It is a historic moral victory that affirms the dignity of our landowners,” Jimson Tanangada said. The Police Minister holds the Gizo-Kolombangara seat, whose constituency office put more than $3 million into the landowners’ trust before the transfer, and he traced the claim to 1923, when the tribes’ forefathers first lodged collective claims over the island under British rule.
Three Solomon Islands Timber Processors and Exporters Association exporters met PEFC controlled source terms in February, after more than a decade of due diligence work with the New Zealand Tropical Timber Importers Group, and Simon Dorries, the Responsible Wood chief executive, says that status is recognised under Australia’s illegal logging regulation and New Zealand’s legal harvest assurance system.
“NZITTG has, since 2015, been pushing hard to source third-party legally verified timber products from the Solomons,” Malcolm Scott said, and the group’s chair expects another three or four exporters to join later this year or next.
