AGM Minutes & General Progress Report
23 July 2004

To All Partners

We are pleased to report as follows:

Forest Stand Progress
All four forest stands have been surveyed recently for survival, pest browse, growth, and weed competition. Overall the Partnership's trees have done well, with survival at about 95%.
Except for a sharp dry period in December and January it was a good first season and winter so far has been mild. Your Radiata has only recently stopped growing.
The riskiest part of a forest investment is the first season. If survival is poor there can be a large cost in replanting and then you have effectively two different aged crops in one stand, which is not ideal. Accordingly, in this Partnership we have got over the first major hurdle!

Area planted last winter
Based on the number of trees planted divided by the average number per hectare (as measured by sample plots), the approximate planted areas in hectares of the Partnership's four stands are:

These are all a little less than the estimates in the Forestry Plan of the likely approximate plantable areas. In each case, upon clearance for planting we found either a little less area resulted and/or there were more bits that did not warrant planting. In the case of HF3 and GP1 there are a few hectares of scrub that despite desiccation and repeated efforts, would not burn. To manually clear such scrub would involve unreasonable cost and may not gain much.

Blanking requirements this winter
Only GP1 requires any 'blanking' (re-planting). Overall 2/3rds of GP1 is perfect but the 1/3rd that is sunny suffered in the early summer drought and will require some blanking. There has also been a significant amount of browse on the sunny faces by hares and possums despite our control efforts. The trees will recover from that however. Blanking will amount to about 10% of the stand overall. (There is a contingency for 10% replanting of all four stands in the original Forestry Plan & Cash Flow budget.) The sunny 1/3rd will be re-released too.
On CC2 we will not blank as survival has been close to 100%. We will plant a few 100 more in a couple of places where there have been small slips off the track. No more release is required.
On HF1 and GT14, again no blanking is needed with very high survival, but in each case about 1-2 ha new planting will be done where we could not get access last winter. No more release is required on HF3 but about 1/3rd of GT14 will be re-released as it has vigorous broom re-growth.
When we do the blanking & further planting next month, we will do our best to plant into the margins of some of the previously unplantable areas. We will also catch any small patches missed by the planters last year. These are not large areas at all, but complete the job of planting all the assessable country on each site where trees will grow well. That is the investor's obligation in a joint venture.
All new planting, blanking and re-releasing will be done next month by supervised contractors.

Kind regards,
Charles Etherington,
Manager
Warren Forestry Ltd

Warren Forestry Ltd, New Zealand forestry investment provider
Warren Forestry Ltd, New Zealand forestry investment providerWarren Forestry Ltd, New Zealand forestry investment providerWarren Forestry Ltd, New Zealand forestry investment provider