Major job losses: Sandalwood company to be chopped up after all

The receivers and managers of the Indian Sandalwood company have decided to split up the timber grower for sale which has triggered many job losses.

Redundancies were announced today (Tuesday) at Kununurra and Albany, with those operations placed into "care and maintenance".

The 69 redundancies has impacted 33 staff at Albany, 17 positions at Kununurra and 19 staff in marketing, administration, forestry and finance at the Perth head office.

FTI Consulting took quick action after Quintis' latest financial collapse and has been trying to sell the company as a going concern.

Quintis operates the world's largest sandalwood estate with 7800 hectares (19,274 acres) of established plantations and three million sandalwood trees.

The company owns large plantations and real estate in the Northern Territory and the Kimberley with a Perth headquarters.

It also had an operations centre in Kununurra, a smaller plantation and land in Queensland, and the Mt Romance oil distillation facility and shop near Albany.

The company owns 4000ha of plantations in its own right, and manages the remainder of the estate for various clients.

The sandalwood plantations are located across northern Australia, from the Ord River Irrigation area in WA through to Douglas Daly and Katherine in the NT, with a small plantation in the Burdekin in Queensland.

The Kununurra Wood Processing Facility processes the wood from harvested plantations to produce pure heartwood logs, chips and powder.

The sandalwood empire was founded with the financial support of thousands of mum and dad investors as a managed investment scheme.

The same company was recapitalised after falling into financial trouble back in 2018.

The receivers said the second stage of its sale process finished last week.

"The offers received are complex, and unfortunately, there was limited interest from potential purchasers to purchase the company as a going concern," a spokesman for FTI Consulting said.

"Although two offers for the whole company were received, neither met the required thresholds so were therefore incapable of completion."

The receivers said the next stages of the sales process will focus on individual asset sales (plantation, real estate and other assets).

They said the 69 staff redundancies equates to about 62 per cent of the Quintis workforce.

"This was an incredibly difficult decision and we are very aware of the impact this has on staff," receivers said.

"However, due to Quintis's financial position, continued operating losses and an asset-focused forward sales process, the only real option - having explored many - was to place operations onto care and maintenance and make numerous roles redundant," FTI Consulting senior managing director Daniel Woodhouse said.