Loan Processing is perhaps the most tedious and crucial part of a mortgage loan application. Most loans are rejected at this stage for improper handling. With Processing Outsourcing one can decrease processing costs by up to 50%, Reduce processing complexity, Eliminate bottlenecks in post closing and servicing, improve customer service. Besides the budget associated with supporting an in-house mortgage processing department can be expensive. Recruiting and retaining qualified in-house mortgage loan processors can be frustrating, time-consuming and costly.
Area of Service :
• Loan Origination / Pre-qualification Support• Mortgage Loan Processing / Underwriting Back-Office• Due Diligence Audits • Document and Pipeline Management• Work flow Management/Business Process Re-engineering (Consultancy)• Existing/New Customer Support• Mortgage Servicing Back OfficeMortgage Acquisition and Origination Methods:
1. Lead generation through telemarketing and internet
2. Customer Acquisition analytics
3. 1003 Processing
4. Ordering Vendor services like Credit, Title and Deed
5. Supporting Doc verification
6. Property verification / valuation
7. Employment Verification / credit checks
8. Good Faith Estimates
9. Annual Percentage Ratio
10. Rate Adjustments
11. Payment Schedule
12. Security
13. Pre-payment
14. Rate Lock
15. Loan Submission
16. Funding
Currently the US market for mortgage processing is between $6 to 7.4 billion while the existing Indian corrolary is a measly $150 million. Express Computer Reports: Analysts expect this trend to accelerate, as labour costs constitute a significant portion of the overall costs that mortgage banks incur in servicing clients. Offshore outsourcing is expected to generate cost savings in the range of 30-50 percent.Mortgage banks are looking for ITO and BPO as long term strategic tools. India is fast becoming a Mortgage manufacturing hub, with its strong competitive advantage over other economies like China, Canada, Philipines etc.The loan processing is another area which can fetch in upto 50% of cost savings if offshored to destinations like India.
Works to India -
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
US: Despite Housing Slide, Real Estate Sites Sell
New York Times
TALK about an uh-oh moment.
It was late October, and Redfin, an online real estate brokerage firm based in Seattle, had received just three months earlier a $12 million investment led by the marquee venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. In the interim, the mortgage industry melted down, foreclosures spiked and housing sales slowed to a crawl. Now, one of Redfin’s biggest markets, Los Angeles, was battling a series of wildfires and Redfin’s sales had stopped cold.
Redfin was not the only victim of bad timing. Venture capitalists poured about $50 million into three other real estate Web sites last year — Zillow, Terabitz and Trulia — only to watch the market enter a historic slide.
Now, although most of the real estate industry wishes it could fast-forward through 2008, these online start-ups are surviving nicely. Each company recently reported strong sales and increases in Web traffic. Trulia surged to the top by the end of 2007, from sixth place in 2006, according to Nielsen Online.
Although these sites are not growing as quickly as they might have during a bullish market, they are at least growing.
“In September, we thought it was maybe the beginning of a very long downturn,” said Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s chief executive. “But for whatever reason, the last few months have been very strong for us.”
Executives of Trulia, Zillow and Terabitz said they, too, were encouraged by recent results. Online real estate companies, they added, could be today’s version of the online travel agencies that flourished after the Sept. 11 attacks: a cheap alternative for suppliers looking to market a product that is suddenly in low demand.
In this case, brokers and agents have seen their marketing budgets shrink in lock step with their commissions as they struggle to sell homes.
“There’s no doubt that a lot of brokers are feeling some pain right now,” said Pete Flint, chief executive of Trulia, a real estate search service based in San Francisco. “They’re spending less on advertising than they were, but they’re spending a significantly larger portion online, because it’s cheaper, and it’s where the audience is.”
Mr. Flint would not disclose sales figures, but he said traffic was growing more than 10 percent monthly, “and revenues are growing much faster than that.”
Redfin is a slightly different story because it does not accept advertising from brokers and agents. Rather, the site competes with traditional brokerage firms to offer people a way to buy and sell homes without face-to-face contact with an agent.
Buyers and sellers communicate with Redfin’s agents — in effect, customer service representatives on the Web — by phone and through e-mail to negotiate deals and arrange house visits, among other things. Customers pay far lower fees to Redfin than they would pay to traditional agents.
With home sales slowing, Mr. Kelman said that “we had to get very serious about figuring out what works and what doesn’t for sellers.” The company’s analysts pored through sales data and found that, among other things, listings that make their debuts on Fridays draw 7.7 percent more visitors than those introduced on Thursdays. In addition, listings priced at $351,001 receive significantly less attention online than those listed at $350,000, because of how real estate search engines filter their results.
The company began disseminating such tips to clients in December, around the same time Redfin’s results began improving. Since late September, the site’s share of real estate sales in which Redfin represented the buyer rose by 23 percent in Seattle, to nearly 2.5 percent, and jumped by 176 percent in the San Francisco area, to nearly 1 percent.
Zillow, which in September raised $30 million from Legg Mason Capital Management and others, attracted 20 percent more visitors in December 2007 than in December 2006, according to Spencer Rascoff, Zillow’s chief financial officer.
“Our growth actually accelerated in the back half of the year,” he said. “In a down market, buyers, sellers and agents need more tools.”
The amount of advertising revenue that Zillow generates for every 1,000 pages on its site has more than doubled from a year ago, Mr. Rascoff said, as the site has added more sales agents and advertising products that allow marketers to reach homeowners at specific addresses. (People wishing to see Zillow’s appraisal of a home type in the address).
Terabitz, which raised $10 million from Tudor Capital in July, builds and maintains online portals for real estate brokers and agents. The business only began selling its services in September, but Ashfaq Munshi, Terabitz’s chief executive, said he was pleased with the progress. The company this month introduced its first six brokerage sites, including that of Century 21 Abrams, Hutchinson and Associates, www.century21ah.com, which serves Middlesex and Mercer Counties in New Jersey.
Whether the success of the newcomers will spread to more established sites is an open question, said Kenneth Cassar, an analyst with Nielsen Online. “There’s dichotomy with what’s going on in this category, when it comes to visitors and advertisers,” he said. While the number of visitors is up, the number of ads run on real estate sites dropped 31 percent last year when compared with 2006.
In past years, Mr. Cassar said, consumers who visited these sites were usually in the market for a house, a new mortgage or goods to help them complete a remodeling. “Today, they want to understand the impact of the broader market on their local market,” he said. And as consumers find mostly bad news on that front, they are not exactly great targets for marketers who want to sell them new couches, new homes or a new mortgage.
“But people still need to live someplace and move from time to time,” Mr. Cassar said. “So there will be a consistent base of activity that’ll keep a number of these players quite happy.”
New York Times
By BOB TEDESCHI
Published: January 28, 2008
TALK about an uh-oh moment.
It was late October, and Redfin, an online real estate brokerage firm based in Seattle, had received just three months earlier a $12 million investment led by the marquee venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. In the interim, the mortgage industry melted down, foreclosures spiked and housing sales slowed to a crawl. Now, one of Redfin’s biggest markets, Los Angeles, was battling a series of wildfires and Redfin’s sales had stopped cold.
Redfin was not the only victim of bad timing. Venture capitalists poured about $50 million into three other real estate Web sites last year — Zillow, Terabitz and Trulia — only to watch the market enter a historic slide.
Now, although most of the real estate industry wishes it could fast-forward through 2008, these online start-ups are surviving nicely. Each company recently reported strong sales and increases in Web traffic. Trulia surged to the top by the end of 2007, from sixth place in 2006, according to Nielsen Online.
Although these sites are not growing as quickly as they might have during a bullish market, they are at least growing.
“In September, we thought it was maybe the beginning of a very long downturn,” said Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s chief executive. “But for whatever reason, the last few months have been very strong for us.”
Executives of Trulia, Zillow and Terabitz said they, too, were encouraged by recent results. Online real estate companies, they added, could be today’s version of the online travel agencies that flourished after the Sept. 11 attacks: a cheap alternative for suppliers looking to market a product that is suddenly in low demand.
In this case, brokers and agents have seen their marketing budgets shrink in lock step with their commissions as they struggle to sell homes.
“There’s no doubt that a lot of brokers are feeling some pain right now,” said Pete Flint, chief executive of Trulia, a real estate search service based in San Francisco. “They’re spending less on advertising than they were, but they’re spending a significantly larger portion online, because it’s cheaper, and it’s where the audience is.”
Mr. Flint would not disclose sales figures, but he said traffic was growing more than 10 percent monthly, “and revenues are growing much faster than that.”
Redfin is a slightly different story because it does not accept advertising from brokers and agents. Rather, the site competes with traditional brokerage firms to offer people a way to buy and sell homes without face-to-face contact with an agent.
Buyers and sellers communicate with Redfin’s agents — in effect, customer service representatives on the Web — by phone and through e-mail to negotiate deals and arrange house visits, among other things. Customers pay far lower fees to Redfin than they would pay to traditional agents.
With home sales slowing, Mr. Kelman said that “we had to get very serious about figuring out what works and what doesn’t for sellers.” The company’s analysts pored through sales data and found that, among other things, listings that make their debuts on Fridays draw 7.7 percent more visitors than those introduced on Thursdays. In addition, listings priced at $351,001 receive significantly less attention online than those listed at $350,000, because of how real estate search engines filter their results.
The company began disseminating such tips to clients in December, around the same time Redfin’s results began improving. Since late September, the site’s share of real estate sales in which Redfin represented the buyer rose by 23 percent in Seattle, to nearly 2.5 percent, and jumped by 176 percent in the San Francisco area, to nearly 1 percent.
Zillow, which in September raised $30 million from Legg Mason Capital Management and others, attracted 20 percent more visitors in December 2007 than in December 2006, according to Spencer Rascoff, Zillow’s chief financial officer.
“Our growth actually accelerated in the back half of the year,” he said. “In a down market, buyers, sellers and agents need more tools.”
The amount of advertising revenue that Zillow generates for every 1,000 pages on its site has more than doubled from a year ago, Mr. Rascoff said, as the site has added more sales agents and advertising products that allow marketers to reach homeowners at specific addresses. (People wishing to see Zillow’s appraisal of a home type in the address).
Terabitz, which raised $10 million from Tudor Capital in July, builds and maintains online portals for real estate brokers and agents. The business only began selling its services in September, but Ashfaq Munshi, Terabitz’s chief executive, said he was pleased with the progress. The company this month introduced its first six brokerage sites, including that of Century 21 Abrams, Hutchinson and Associates, www.century21ah.com, which serves Middlesex and Mercer Counties in New Jersey.
Whether the success of the newcomers will spread to more established sites is an open question, said Kenneth Cassar, an analyst with Nielsen Online. “There’s dichotomy with what’s going on in this category, when it comes to visitors and advertisers,” he said. While the number of visitors is up, the number of ads run on real estate sites dropped 31 percent last year when compared with 2006.
In past years, Mr. Cassar said, consumers who visited these sites were usually in the market for a house, a new mortgage or goods to help them complete a remodeling. “Today, they want to understand the impact of the broader market on their local market,” he said. And as consumers find mostly bad news on that front, they are not exactly great targets for marketers who want to sell them new couches, new homes or a new mortgage.
“But people still need to live someplace and move from time to time,” Mr. Cassar said. “So there will be a consistent base of activity that’ll keep a number of these players quite happy.”
New York Times
By BOB TEDESCHI
Published: January 28, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT JOINS IN DEVELOPMENT OF NECS
The Federal Government has now joined the State and Territory Governments and the banking, legal, conveyancing and information broker industries as a member of the National Electronic Conveyancing System Steering Committee. This is a significant step in the development of a truly national system for electronic conveyancing.
NECS has wide ranging national ramifications and fits in well with the Federal Government’s thrust of red tape reduction, harmonization of State and Territory functions and finding national solutions to national problems. The new Federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, has recently expressed his support for NECS and confirmed the Federal Government’s commitment to assist in its development.
Source NECS
December newsletter
NECS has wide ranging national ramifications and fits in well with the Federal Government’s thrust of red tape reduction, harmonization of State and Territory functions and finding national solutions to national problems. The new Federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, has recently expressed his support for NECS and confirmed the Federal Government’s commitment to assist in its development.
Source NECS
December newsletter
The Risk of Innovation: Will Anyone Embrace It?
THE Prius has become one of the hottest cars in America — an amazing development, because this hybrid-electric car requires some rather large changes in how people behave.
I learned the need for Prius-style adaptation early this month, when I rented a Prius from Budget Rent A Car in Seattle. Much to my embarrassment, I couldn’t get it to go forward. Once I got going and arrived at my destination, I couldn’t figure out how to put it in reverse.
Fortunately, another Prius owner on the premises — they seem to be everywhere these days — gave me a quick lesson. You start the Prius by pressing a button on the dashboard, not once but twice. To put it in drive or reverse, you manipulate a very small stick protruding from the dashboard.
The next morning, I awoke before dawn and started the Prius, but no matter how many times I pressed the button, I couldn’t get it to move. I finally called Budget roadside assistance, and a polite man talked me back from my private technology disaster. It turns out that I had failed to tap the brake while moving the gear shifter in a certain inexplicable way.
I don’t think I can adapt to the behaviors required by the Prius. But thousands of people are, and Toyota, its maker, is reaping the benefits.
Whether humans will embrace or resist an innovation is the billion-dollar question facing designers of novel products and services. Why do people adapt to some new technologies and not to others? Fortunes are made and lost on the answer.
Great innovations have foundered over human stubbornness. Consider the Picturephone, trumpeted by AT&T at the New York World’s Fair in 1964 as a major technological advance. Engineers reasoned that if hearing someone’s voice over the phone was terrific, wouldn’t seeing a face be even better?
Consumers didn’t think so. AT&T’s Picturephone, which would have added around $90 to a person’s monthly phone bill in 1974, a huge amount for the time, “was superfluous, adding little information to voice alone, especially considering its high price,” said Kenneth Lipartito, a professor of history at Florida International University.
Even today, when adding video to a phone is a trivial cost, consumers may rebel. Video-conferencing often remains an activity forced on people by their employers.
Resistance to technology is an omnipresent risk for every innovator. Even a device as fabulously freeing as the personal computer struck some people as an abomination. In 1990, the poet Wendell Berry famously declared his perpetual allegiance to the typewriter in his essay, “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.”
Few people joined him, however, a reminder that rejection isn’t the real specter facing new gear. Adaptable humans usually trade one technology for another, rather than reject any and all. To be accepted, innovations must deliver benefits — enough benefits to make change worthwhile.
“As consumers we’re constantly asking ourselves, where do we draw the line? How far do we go?” says Mitchell Kapor, chairman of the Open Source Applications Foundation in San Francisco.
Businesses crave a sweet spot: where the line is drawn in favor of the innovator. The late Akio Morita, founder of Sony, talked about satisfying appetites that people didn’t even know they had. He achieved such a feat with the Sony Walkman, the music player introduced in 1979. While at the Lotus Development Corporation, Mr. Kapor created another such “killer app,” or application: the spreadsheet for the PC.
Killer apps are sought-after innovations because people get addicted to them and make behavioral changes that might otherwise be unthinkable. “Those who benefit from a technology adapt to its constraints and become dependent on it,” says John Staudenmaier, editor of the journal Technology and Culture and a historian of technology at the University of Detroit Mercy.
Dependency drives profits, the ultimate arbiter — for some — of an innovation’s success. Look how Apple has converted the mania for the iPod into record profits — and a record stock price.
IPod “addiction” seems benign. Yet some worry that other innovations may harbor health threats. As a result, they may be vulnerable to what Marc Ventresca, a lecturer at the Saïd Business School at Oxford, calls the “frog boiling” problem. For the frog, gradually rising heat causes no alarm — until the water is so hot that death is imminent.
“Adaptation can sometimes be dangerous, but the hazard isn’t apparent until it is ‘too late,’” Mr. Ventresca says.
While people may be fearful of allowing a seductive technology to imperil them — the “Frankenstein effect” — they may also fear the consequences of not changing their ways. As the case of climate change illustrates, many consumers are enthusiastic about changing their behavior — in this case, the way they drive cars — if they believe that by adapting to new technologies they will save themselves and the planet. Think of the Prius again.
FOR technological innovators, the cash register can ring either way. They may achieve a smash-hit breakthrough, or simply make a slight improvement in a technology that humans already feel comfortable with. Most innovators no longer even try to predict human reactions to their creations.
Henry Kressel, a partner at Warburg Pincus and a co-author of “Competing for the Future: How Digital Innovations Are Changing the World,” says, “You throw technologies into the market and see what sticks.”
The hope is that passionate “early adopters” will blaze a path toward mass acceptance of a new technology. Yet the truth is that no one can tell in advance which innovations people will adapt to and which will become the next example of the Picturephone.
Where people draw the line can be known only after the fact. Which is why innovation is always a risky — even humbling — business.
NY Times
G. Pascal Zachary teaches journalism at Stanford and writes about technology and economic development.
I learned the need for Prius-style adaptation early this month, when I rented a Prius from Budget Rent A Car in Seattle. Much to my embarrassment, I couldn’t get it to go forward. Once I got going and arrived at my destination, I couldn’t figure out how to put it in reverse.
Fortunately, another Prius owner on the premises — they seem to be everywhere these days — gave me a quick lesson. You start the Prius by pressing a button on the dashboard, not once but twice. To put it in drive or reverse, you manipulate a very small stick protruding from the dashboard.
The next morning, I awoke before dawn and started the Prius, but no matter how many times I pressed the button, I couldn’t get it to move. I finally called Budget roadside assistance, and a polite man talked me back from my private technology disaster. It turns out that I had failed to tap the brake while moving the gear shifter in a certain inexplicable way.
I don’t think I can adapt to the behaviors required by the Prius. But thousands of people are, and Toyota, its maker, is reaping the benefits.
Whether humans will embrace or resist an innovation is the billion-dollar question facing designers of novel products and services. Why do people adapt to some new technologies and not to others? Fortunes are made and lost on the answer.
Great innovations have foundered over human stubbornness. Consider the Picturephone, trumpeted by AT&T at the New York World’s Fair in 1964 as a major technological advance. Engineers reasoned that if hearing someone’s voice over the phone was terrific, wouldn’t seeing a face be even better?
Consumers didn’t think so. AT&T’s Picturephone, which would have added around $90 to a person’s monthly phone bill in 1974, a huge amount for the time, “was superfluous, adding little information to voice alone, especially considering its high price,” said Kenneth Lipartito, a professor of history at Florida International University.
Even today, when adding video to a phone is a trivial cost, consumers may rebel. Video-conferencing often remains an activity forced on people by their employers.
Resistance to technology is an omnipresent risk for every innovator. Even a device as fabulously freeing as the personal computer struck some people as an abomination. In 1990, the poet Wendell Berry famously declared his perpetual allegiance to the typewriter in his essay, “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.”
Few people joined him, however, a reminder that rejection isn’t the real specter facing new gear. Adaptable humans usually trade one technology for another, rather than reject any and all. To be accepted, innovations must deliver benefits — enough benefits to make change worthwhile.
“As consumers we’re constantly asking ourselves, where do we draw the line? How far do we go?” says Mitchell Kapor, chairman of the Open Source Applications Foundation in San Francisco.
Businesses crave a sweet spot: where the line is drawn in favor of the innovator. The late Akio Morita, founder of Sony, talked about satisfying appetites that people didn’t even know they had. He achieved such a feat with the Sony Walkman, the music player introduced in 1979. While at the Lotus Development Corporation, Mr. Kapor created another such “killer app,” or application: the spreadsheet for the PC.
Killer apps are sought-after innovations because people get addicted to them and make behavioral changes that might otherwise be unthinkable. “Those who benefit from a technology adapt to its constraints and become dependent on it,” says John Staudenmaier, editor of the journal Technology and Culture and a historian of technology at the University of Detroit Mercy.
Dependency drives profits, the ultimate arbiter — for some — of an innovation’s success. Look how Apple has converted the mania for the iPod into record profits — and a record stock price.
IPod “addiction” seems benign. Yet some worry that other innovations may harbor health threats. As a result, they may be vulnerable to what Marc Ventresca, a lecturer at the Saïd Business School at Oxford, calls the “frog boiling” problem. For the frog, gradually rising heat causes no alarm — until the water is so hot that death is imminent.
“Adaptation can sometimes be dangerous, but the hazard isn’t apparent until it is ‘too late,’” Mr. Ventresca says.
While people may be fearful of allowing a seductive technology to imperil them — the “Frankenstein effect” — they may also fear the consequences of not changing their ways. As the case of climate change illustrates, many consumers are enthusiastic about changing their behavior — in this case, the way they drive cars — if they believe that by adapting to new technologies they will save themselves and the planet. Think of the Prius again.
FOR technological innovators, the cash register can ring either way. They may achieve a smash-hit breakthrough, or simply make a slight improvement in a technology that humans already feel comfortable with. Most innovators no longer even try to predict human reactions to their creations.
Henry Kressel, a partner at Warburg Pincus and a co-author of “Competing for the Future: How Digital Innovations Are Changing the World,” says, “You throw technologies into the market and see what sticks.”
The hope is that passionate “early adopters” will blaze a path toward mass acceptance of a new technology. Yet the truth is that no one can tell in advance which innovations people will adapt to and which will become the next example of the Picturephone.
Where people draw the line can be known only after the fact. Which is why innovation is always a risky — even humbling — business.
NY Times
G. Pascal Zachary teaches journalism at Stanford and writes about technology and economic development.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Pulped — Vic forests end up as copy paper
MOST of the trees logged in Victoria's native forests last year ended up as pulp, much of it exported to Japan to become photocopying paper. More than 85% of the 1.59 million cubic metres of the state's native forest logged last financial year — the equivalent of 4745 MCGs — was turned into woodchips, sawdust and waste.
The figures were released after a freedom-of-information request. They show that despite claims the industry is based on providing sawlogs for the state's building needs, this type of wood accounted for only 11.9% of the amount logged, with the remaining 2.8% turned into shipping pallets.
VicForests, the quasi-government agency charged with commercialising the state's forests, said the figures were only indicative as it does not keep records on how the wood is used, but are based on "our industry knowledge".
Luke Chamberlain, of the Wilderness Society, said poor industry practice meant vast areas of forest were being logged for a small amount of sawlog.
He said plantation wood could supply most of the state's needs, other than the highest-quality sawlogs, which he argues should be logged selectively rather than the current practice of clear-felling large coupes of native forest.
"These figures prove that logging of our native forest is not driven by the need for sawlogs, but for woodchips," he said.
"Under the national competition policy and the rules under which VicForests was established, it must be commercially viable and obviously it isn't."
The Sunday Age reported in December that VicForests sold last year's harvest for $99 million but reported a $17,000 loss. Last year, pulp fetched about $10 a metric tonne, while high-quality sawlogs fetched more than $70.
Two of the three big mills that bought the timber — Australian Paper, a subsidiary of PaperlinX and Japanese-owned South East Fibre Exports — posted a combined profit of $87 million last financial year, the Australian Securities Exchange and Australian Securities and Investments Commission filings show.
The privately held Midway did not release its profit.
David Pollard, chief executive of VicForests, said the "proportional and total sawlog level was lower than previous years because of bushfires and subsequent low sawlog-producing fire-salvage operation".
"The amount of pulp log produced in any year is about twice the amount of sawlogs."
Mr Chamberlain said this could not be independently verified as the volume of differing types of wood is not provided in VicForests' annual report or on its website.
Mr Pollard said paper manufacture from pulp was "one of the highest value-adding industries in Australia" and that the pulp industry helps to keep the price of sawlog timber lower.
The Age - 20/1/08
Peter Weekes
The figures were released after a freedom-of-information request. They show that despite claims the industry is based on providing sawlogs for the state's building needs, this type of wood accounted for only 11.9% of the amount logged, with the remaining 2.8% turned into shipping pallets.
VicForests, the quasi-government agency charged with commercialising the state's forests, said the figures were only indicative as it does not keep records on how the wood is used, but are based on "our industry knowledge".
Luke Chamberlain, of the Wilderness Society, said poor industry practice meant vast areas of forest were being logged for a small amount of sawlog.
He said plantation wood could supply most of the state's needs, other than the highest-quality sawlogs, which he argues should be logged selectively rather than the current practice of clear-felling large coupes of native forest.
"These figures prove that logging of our native forest is not driven by the need for sawlogs, but for woodchips," he said.
"Under the national competition policy and the rules under which VicForests was established, it must be commercially viable and obviously it isn't."
The Sunday Age reported in December that VicForests sold last year's harvest for $99 million but reported a $17,000 loss. Last year, pulp fetched about $10 a metric tonne, while high-quality sawlogs fetched more than $70.
Two of the three big mills that bought the timber — Australian Paper, a subsidiary of PaperlinX and Japanese-owned South East Fibre Exports — posted a combined profit of $87 million last financial year, the Australian Securities Exchange and Australian Securities and Investments Commission filings show.
The privately held Midway did not release its profit.
David Pollard, chief executive of VicForests, said the "proportional and total sawlog level was lower than previous years because of bushfires and subsequent low sawlog-producing fire-salvage operation".
"The amount of pulp log produced in any year is about twice the amount of sawlogs."
Mr Chamberlain said this could not be independently verified as the volume of differing types of wood is not provided in VicForests' annual report or on its website.
Mr Pollard said paper manufacture from pulp was "one of the highest value-adding industries in Australia" and that the pulp industry helps to keep the price of sawlog timber lower.
The Age - 20/1/08
Peter Weekes
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