TASMANIAN forest company Gunns' receivers and managers will maintain firefighting services in about 165,000 hectares of North-East and North-West plantations until asset sales have been finalised.
A spokesman for receiver and manager KordaMentha said yesterday that the 165,000 hectares included 110,000 hectares of managed investment scheme plantations.
``As far as Gunns-owned plantations are concerned, it's business as usual,'' the spokesman said.
``As far as fire maintenance goes, the forest assets have not been sold - they are in the same bucket of assets as the pulp mill project and are linked to that.
``They are still operating as normal.''
There had been an agreement signed with Gunns' administrator PPB Advisory for Gunns staff to cover MIS forests' fire maintenance in the short term, the spokesman said.
The MIS forests would pay for the service, the spokesman said.
He said that KordaMentha had been in close contact with authorities regarding the bushfire situation in Tasmania.
``As far as I know there is no emergency situation so far,'' he said.
New questions of fire maintenance in the MIS forests would be raised if the managed investment schemes ceased to exist after the wind-up of Gunns, the spokesman said.
PPB Advisory partner Daniel Bryant said this week that a date had not yet been set for the second Gunns' creditors meeting, due by the end of the month.
He floated the possibility of the meeting being postponed until next month.
PPB Advisory went to court to have the date for the meeting extended beyond the original proposal, which was before the end of December.
Mr Bryant said that the newly negotiated date of January 31 meant that it could be held as late as February 7 as the legal requirement was that it was held within five business days of the date granted.
He said that PPB was considering whether to go back to court to get another extension to give it time to sort out the managed investment schemes.
``It's a complicated procedure,'' he said.
