When you’re working in policy and economics, the timescale for change is often frustratingly slow. The economics may be clear, but the politics and inertia of a project or policy can keep it limping along longer than you’d expect. So we always expel a collective sigh when a long campaign comes to a close*. We first looked into the economics of the Gunns Bell Bay Pulp Mill in 2007 when we undertook some financial modelling of the project for the Launceston Environment Centre. Our analysis indicated that the project was highly sensitive to movements in the exchange rate and pulp prices and that these didn’t have to swing far to make the project unviable. You can read more about this work and download the full report on our website.

This analysis has been vindicated with the news in recent days that Gunns has gone into administration. You can read about it here, here, here, here and here.

*Accoding to reports (and here), the permit for the pulp mill might still be up for sale. We’ll have to watch and see regarding this.