Mike Freeman with ATP’s managing director, Richard Galley. Photos by Alf Manciagli

Before Allied Timber Products (ATP) came to Bathurst, it had been quite some time since there had been significant timber processing in town.

It took the vision of a Queensland family company to bring milling back onto the agenda for a town that is ideally situated to tap into Forests NSW 68000 hectares of plantation pine (and around 16000 hectares of privately-owned plantation) in the central west of New South Wales.

In June last year, ATP began production from its impressive $15 million new sawmill at Raglan.

The man behind the new mill is ATP’s managing director, Richard Galley. An unassuming, hardworking Queenslander, he is tricky to track down as he splits his time between Bathurst and the family’s established processing operation at Burpengary, 40 kilometres north of Brisbane.

In this competitive environment, Richard is proud of the fact that ATP has remained a family-run business, with his father Colin chairman of the board, and brother Steven company secretary.

“The reason we chose Bathurst was that the resource in Queensland was fully utilised, and we saw the potential to expand our business here due to the available pine resource,” he said.

“We are very excited about the future of our business at Bathurst, and we are enjoying working with the local community and suppliers.”

Proximity to market was also important in the company’s choice of location as its main markets are Sydney, Newcastle, the Illawarra and Canberra.

It also exports a small amount of sawn timber to China and has plans to further explore this market.

Forests NSW softwood sales manager, Gavin Matthew, said after being successful in a competitive tender process, ATP had signed a 10-year timber supply agreement with Forests NSW, for the supply of up to 90000 cubic metres of softwood sawlogs each year, with an option to extend for a further 10 years, underpinning ATP’s investment.

“ATP’s mill provides a good fit with the other processing facilities that are supplied from Macquarie Region, and allows Forests NSW to more efficiently utilise each plantation tree,” he said.

The mill employs about 25 local people, with more jobs to come on line with planned expansion in the next few years.

The state-of-the-art sawmill, imported from Finland, specialises in sawing small sawlogs (12 to 25 centimetres) to produce timbers for a range of products including fencing, landscaping, pallets, packaging and framing.

The plant also incorporates a debarking line, kiln and a timber preservation unit, which has the capacity to custom treat products for customers.

There are also plans in the next 12 to 18 months to construct a planer mill for the production of a range of ‘dressed products’ including decking and appearance grade boards. Plus there are plans for more timber drying kilns.

Richard won’t make grandiose statements about the company’s vision for the future – but he would say that producing a ‘quality product’ was what mattered.

“We are aiming to produce a range of quality outdoor products that will be long lasting,” he said before whizzing out the door to the mill.

This article appears in the Autumn 2007 edition of Bush Telegraph Magazine.