The convoluted and uncompetitive process of delivering newsprint from Australia’s only mill to the country’s print sites is exposed in comments from a key Norske Skog executive.

Approached by News Corp Australia’s The Australian, sales, marketing and logistics manager Michael Heinecke told the national daily it was 76 per cent more expensive to send paper to Sydney than it would be to send it to China.

He told GXpress that containerised newsprint travels by rail from the company’s Boyer mill, just outside Hobart, to Burnie (in north east Tasmania) and thence by StraitLink ship to Melbourne.

While deliveries to Adelaide and Sydney then continue by rail, those to Perth and Brisbane – including to News’ major Queensland print site in Yandina – are shipped to the major ports by sea.

And there the problem lies: Heinecke says cabotage charges introduced in 2012 when Anthony Albanese was transport minister, mean that shipping a container-load of newsprint from Melbourne to Brisbane costs more than sending it to China, “on the same ship”. The cost, however, is still less than sending it by rail.

Cabotage charges in the Coastal Trading Act were introduced to support Australia’s domestic shipping sector, but Australia’s shipping fleet has fallen from 55 ships in 1996 to 21 in 2011 to nine now. A review of shipping legislation was announced in August in support of an Albanese election promise to develop a national strategic shipping fleet reserve of 12 domestically registered.

However, there are fears that more protectionist measures being discussed may make things worse for Australian manufacturers.

Heinecke told The Australian it was “nearly at the point you could send it to New Zealand and back to Sydney cheaper than Melbourne to Sydney” and admitted they had even looked looked at sending paper to Auckland, taking it off the ship for a day – to meet regulation requirements – and then putting it back on the ship to bring it back to an Australian port.

Meanwhile the Boyer mill has compete with paper from Korea and Indonesia – and to a lesser extent, China – with the Asian mills exporting paper to Australian ports “at a fraction of the price”.

Pictured: The Boyer mill, produces up to 261,000 tonnes of newsprint, improved newsprint, book grades and lightweight coated grades