THE need for bees — about 1.6 billion of them — is likely to loom as an issue in a Supreme Court case starting today, that will determine the fate of olive and almond managed investment schemes run by collapsed company Timbercorp.
Timbercorp's 12,000 hectares of almond orchards, which formed the basis for several managed investment schemes run by the company, must be pollinated with bees by the end of next month if they are to produce a crop this year — a process that is, according to bee co-ordinator Trevor Monson, Australia's biggest organised pollination event.
Timbercorp's liquidator, KordaMentha, has applied to the court to wind up Timbercorp's olive and almond schemes, saying the subsidiary responsible for running the schemes has no money.
Timbercorp's growers committee, representing investors, is expected to ask the court to appoint a temporary responsible entity to run the schemes.
Talks were continuing yesterday on a possible deal covering some of the almond schemes, where investors would trade their assets for units in a listed trust run by Align Funds Management.
The deal needs the approval of financier ANZ, which said yesterday it would continue to talk with Align. A source close to Align said resolving the almonds was more urgent than Timbercorp's other agribusiness schemes, because the almond plantations had to be fertilised by bees by the end of next month.
Mr Monson, who worked with Timbercorp's almond manager Select Harvest, said the 52,000 hives needed — each containing 30,000 bees — had been organised but were on hold. They would have to be trucked from Queensland and NSW to fertilise Timbercorp's almond orchards in northern Victoria — at a cost of $3.6 million. Align estimates it will cost $1.5 million to hire enough bees to fertilise the five schemes involved in its proposal.
Mr Monson said a failure to pollinate the schemes would result in "virtually no crop at all" being set this year.
KordaMentha maintains the seven almond and seven olive projects — the almond projects from 2001-07 and the olive schemes from 2001-08 — are insolvent because costs are far greater than projected earnings.
But Paul Riordan, managing director of Timbercorp partner Boundary Bend, said his recently completed record olive harvest was a huge fillip for Timbercorp investors, and a model to follow. Boundary Bend, in which Timbercorp has a 20 per cent stake, manages Timbercorp's olive projects.
The record harvest of 7 million tonnes of olive oil was 13 per cent above forecasts.
The haul was 47 per cent of Australia's 2009 production on only 13 per cent of Australia's productive area of olives, he said.
KordaMentha sold this year's olive crop to Boundary Bend for $15.5 million in April after a Federal Court case.
With no money available from Timbercorp, Boundary Bend had to finance more than $11 million in expenses.
The crop, valued at more than $30 million, will be sold to domestic and international customers in the next 12 months. Boundary Bend will recoup its $11 million and the rest will go to Timbercorp grower investors.
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