DAVAO CITY – The Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) has formed a technical working group to revive and rehabilitate Asia’s erstwhile largest paper mill until it was mothballed in 2006 due to varied reasons, including national and global financial crisis and problems in internal operation.
Secretary Emmanuel Piñol has also named the officers and members of the working group, headed by a MinDA director, Joey Recimilla, and seven alternate members, including MinDA Legal Officer Kristine Quibod.
“The TWG will conduct a thorough study and submit recommendations on the steps to be undertaken to revive and rehabilitate what was once Asia’s biggest and most modern pulp and paper mill,” he said. Pinol was referring to the Paper Industries Development Corp. (Picop), now named PIcop Resources Inc., which operated the wood-processing facility in Bislig City, Surigao del Sur since 1963 until it closed in 2006 and placed under receivership to assure the settlement of its outstanding loans from the banks, including the Land Bank of the Philippines.
The MinDA said that one Francisco Buencamino, the court-appointed rehabilitation receiver of Picop, said said the owners of PICOP “are willing to make additional investments to re-operate the facility now that the policy on the total log ban implemented during the previous administration had been lifted”.
The PIcop was established by the late Andres Soriano Sr. and MinDA said it was recently acquired by Ramon S. Ang of the San Miguel group.
The recent move on reviving Picop, according to Piñol, was the result of the virtual conference arranged by MinDA, “whrch involved critical players in the project, the Court-appointed Rehabilitation Receiver, and officials of Bislig City two weeks ago”.
Among the salient points of the virtual conference “is that while the facilities of PICOP had been raided and robbed by groups identified with the workers’ union, it could still be made operational with the installation of modern equipment”.
“Also, the Supreme Court case, which stemmed from the petition for foreclosure filed by the Land Bank of the Philippines, which had granted the corporation over P2 billion in loans, must be addressed since it remained as the stumbling block in the move to start the rehabilitation,” Pinol added.
Lastly, he said, the local government of Bislig has pledged its support for the rehabilitation and revival of the facility, which was the biggest pulp and paper mill in Asia that employed 20,000.
A paper presented to the International Conference on Public Organization (ICONPO) 2019 by Central Mindanao University researchers Reynante B. Casiro and Emmalyn T. Catubig, said Picop operates in about 182, 682 hectares in the eastern cost of Mindanao. But its productive years were soon weighed down by “both external and internal problems”, from natural calamities and national economic and political instability, high fuel costs in the international market, subtle effects of full privatization and emergence of poachers, smugglers and other unscrupulous illegal log buyers within its concession and the legal and environmental constraints.
The paper said that these all affected Picop’s operation, production, and financial standing “that forced it to shut down in 2006”.