KEITH Cumming grows lots of trees and plants, sometimes up to 6 million of them a year, at his Hamilton nursery.
This year he and his staff are carefully nurturing 1 million bluegums for two of his major customers, Timbercorp and Great Southern.
They are about 20 to 30 centimetres tall and are raised to meet the "exacting specifications" of the two companies, the biggest diversified managed investment scheme companies in Australia.
The seedlings are laid out in neat rows at his Arborline nursery and while they may not be under a greenhouse, with Timbercorp and Great Southern both in voluntary administration, their future is certainly under a cloud.
"What it means is that if they don't now go ahead and plant these seedlings that they've currently got on order, well, I would imagine that we won't get paid for the balance of what we're owed," he said yesterday.
"We've been paid deposits and we've grown the seedlings — and normally they would be planted by the end of June. But Timbercorp have already said to us that if they are planted, it won't be till probably August, but we really don't know.
"No one knows what's going to happen, of course, whether they can go ahead, and the same with Great Southern."
The trees are ready to be planted. "They've just got to be sorted, put in the truck and taken out there basically," Mr Cumming said.
While this year's orders from Great Southern and Timbercorp total a million trees, normally it has been close to 2.5 million. Arborline also supplies trees to other plantations in south-west Victoria.
The deals with Timbercorp and Great Southern are a significant component of his business, representing about 25 per cent of the nursery's annual turnover.
Despite facing some anxious moments himself, Mr Cumming said the predicament of Timbercorp and Great Southern would not cause substantial economic problems for south-western Victoria.
"I think the bigger issue is what's going to happen to the plantations in the future. Who's going to buy the land? What's going to happen to that forestry land and whether other companies are going to come in and buy it, because something has to happen," he said.
Meanwhile, Victorian Farmers Federation president Simon Ramsay has called on the Federal Government to conduct a full review of managed investment schemes, including an examination of the "tax product rulings" attached to them, as well as their impact on rural communities, the environment, regional investment and water use.
"You've got two big companies that have invested heavily in agriculture, under a government tax environment, that have both gone into receivership. Now there needs to be some questions asked," he said.
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