RECEIVERS will attempt to sell the right to build the controversial Bell Bay pulp mill as part of a carve-up of the $2 billion project's failed owner, Gunns.
But receiver Mark Korda said hopes for a sale rested on an assessment of the mill's viability, to be conducted next month.
''Our preliminary view is that all of the permits and requirements to continue the pulp mill can be transferred or sold with little impediment,'' he said.
''What we've got to do is a review in October to lay out what the strategic alternatives are.''
An ANZ-led syndicate of banks, owed about $560 million, appointed Mr Korda and fellow KordaMentha partner Bryan Webster as receivers on Tuesday night after Gunns' directors put the company into administration. The banks are to take a haircut because the company's assets - two sawmills, a vast forestry estate and the pulp mill licence - are likely to be sold for less than they are owed.
The sawmills, which are operating as normal, are believed to be worth $50 million to $100 million, while the 300,000 hectares of forest are believed to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Unsecured creditors who are owed $50 million to $100 million may receive nothing and shareholders in the once-dominant Tasmanian group have been wiped out.
Workers have raised fears for their entitlements, with 49 employees at a Launceston mill that was already set to close walking off the job yesterday and marching on the company's headquarters and an ANZ branch.
Gunns had planned to close the mill on Lindsay Street tomorrow but the receivership threw into doubt its ability to pay the workers their entitlements. ''A company the size of
Gunns not being able to pay 50 workers their legal minimum statutory entitlements makes me wonder - were they ever going to build the pulp mill?'' said Leo Skourdoumbis, the assistant national secretary of the CFMEU's forestry and furnishings branch.
However, the chief executive of training organisation ForestWorks, Michael Hartman, said the workers would receive as planned a top-up payment due under a statewide, industry-wide retraining scheme.
KordaMentha said in addition to the ForestWorks payments, entitlements would be paid from the federal government's GEERS scheme and Gunns itself.
Mr Korda said receivers would first try to sell the sawmills as a going concern, with the forestry estate next on the block and a review of the pulp mill project running in parallel.
''One of the interesting things about a receivership is the buyer doesn't have to buy all the baggage in the past that it gets with the old companies. So we can make it fairly simple for them to evaluate the project and say, do they want to continue with this project?''
He declined to estimate how much the pulp mill licence could fetch.
''We'll know that once we establish the viability and then take some expressions of interest,'' Mr Korda said. ''The important thing is to do with the sawmills and the trees and the employment of the people; the pulp mill is important but it's probably not as time-sensitive for the first month.''
He said KordaMentha would hold a detailed analysis of plantation timber managed-investment schemes run by the company, into which thousands of investors have pumped about $600 million.
''The older trees will be more viable than the trees that have just been planted,'' he said. ''The price for woodchips has fallen dramatically over the past few years and that's affecting the viability or otherwise of a lot of schemes.''
He urged people who borrowed from Gunns to invest in the schemes to continue making repayments: ''When they got the money, if they were on a marginal tax rate, they got 47.5¢ in the dollar back in tax - you know, what did they do with that?''
