Seven staff have been welcomed at Tumut's Blowering Nursery to assist with Forestry Corporation of NSW’s annual pine seedling dispatch.

This brings the local nursery workforce to 17 people, who manage a critical step in the forestry cycle.

Forestry Corporation's Plantation Improvement Manager Phil Green said the new recruits would be grading, packing and loading seedlings bound for state-owned pine plantations around NSW from now until the middle of September.

“Over the May-September period each member of the Blowering Nursery team will handle almost 600,000 seedlings as the team sorts through the nine million cells sown,” Mr Green said.

“Their work is essential to make sure that only those seedlings that meet our standards are dispatched for planting.

"Blowering Nursery is Forestry Corporation's largest production nursery, and we expect to get around 7.4 million seedlings out the gate to our plantations during the winter planting period.

"Across the state we need more than nine million seedlings for this year's softwood planting program. In addition to the crop at Blowering, we've produced 0.6 million seedlings from our nursery in Grafton and we are drawing the rest of our supply from private nurseries under contract.

"From here on in, we'll be working on the substantive task of distributing the seedlings to plantations near Bathurst, Lithgow, Oberon, Tumbarumba, Bombala, Orange, Walcha and Tumut, where they will be hand planted over an area equivalent of about 8,000 football fields.”

Forestry Corporation of NSW manages over 200,000 hectares of pine plantations which produce enough timber to build 25 per cent of houses constructed in Australia each year.

These seedlings will re-establish the state-owned pine plantations that were harvested over the past year, so these plantations can continue to supply local industry and the community with timber into the future.

For more information about Forestry Corporation, visit www.forestrycorporation.com.au

Media contact: Rod Campbell 0428058549