Replies to post #2227 on Investing in Timber

[David Knight]

The TATF website says that they plant about 400 teak trees per acre, with a 3 meter by 3 meter spacing. That would be about 988 trees per hectare, quite a bit less than I'd expected of 1025 to 1470 trees. Though I don't know, I would expect that the planting pattern is a series of equilateral triangles 3 meters on each side.

Has anyone that's visited the farms measured the spacing (to confirm 3 meters) and noticed the pattern for teak plantings? People need a way to convert the area required for 100 trees to hectares in order to independently estimate the return from an investment at TATF.

[planbtotrade]

David,

FYI, TATF has stated to me in the past that they plant 1100 trees to the hectare.

The article also states that costs are 4K to 6K/hectare where the costs include all the pruning, thinning, and care and management for the early years. Or somewhere around US $5/tree.

TATF charges quite a bit more than that, even during their sale events. So they have an additional perhaps $20/tree or more from us over the costs, and they still can not manage to care for our trees or thin them in a professional manner.

This is water under the bridge, but as mentioned before, TATF should have placed the care and management funds in escrow so that they would be there when needed. Instead, TATF has squandered it on Raleo and other unknown things. You have to admit that even if you facter in other things like paying for Land that is not reforested with plantation trees, that there should still be something left.

The only possible explanation for Steve not attempting to explain any of this is because he has no palatable explanation (to tree owners) that does not raise many questions regarding his responsible management of the funds.

If he wants to continue selling trees he should address all of the above, and start escrow accounts.

planb

[dupedbysteve]

David: "From what I've read elsewhere (I believe the ITTO - International Tropical Timber Organization), the value of sawn and dried wood is anywhere from two to five times that of logs (for the same volume of wood)."
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That may be because so much of a log is discarded in the process of being sawn,, I seem to remember(???) it might be as high as 50% or more.