Mr Baker, speaking publicly yesterday for the first time since he resigned from Gunns last year, dismissed new comments on the site choice.

Mr Baker said that Bell Bay had been Gunns' preferred location for its proposed $2.3 billion pulp mill since detailed research had been undertaken by consultants and the company more than four years ago.

"There were a number of strong reasons, including that Bell Bay was the centre for wood catchment," Mr Baker said.

"The North-West didn't have anywhere near the amount of wood required, which meant that you would have to take from the North-East wood catchment.

"That would have meant a significant environmental impact and cost impact because of the rail or road transport."

Mr Baker confirmed that a batch of emailed memos leaked to online forum Tasmanian Times this week had been written and received by him when he worked for Gunns on the pulp mill project.

But he dismissed the emails that talked about the choice of sites and air modelling and air emissions issues as "ancient history".

"Some of them date back to 2006 when only fairly preliminary investigations were going on," Mr Baker said.

He said that he had not been contacted to inform him that the leaked memos had been made public or to comment on them.

"But it doesn't worry me - they are so old that they were outdated long ago," he said.

Other reasons why Bell Bay became the site of choice were environmental, Mr Baker said.

"There was the question at Hampshire of where you would put the ocean outface at Burnie - it's a very different proposition," he said. "And Hampshire is on the edge of the Cradle Mountain Lake St Clair National Park.

"The conservationists would have gone troppo about that - you would have been able to see the stacks from the national park."

Mr Baker worked at Burnie in senior management positions at Associated Pulp and Paper Mills for 15 years before joining Gunns.