DAMAGE to pine trees belonging to Fiji Pine Ltd by Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston has cost the company $2 million.

FPL chairman Faiz Khan said 1400 hectares of pine plantations belonging to FPL was affected by Severe TC Winston.

“Moneywise we’re looking at about $2m in terms of plantation loss,” said Mr Khan.

“But most plantations that were damaged had mature trees that were snapped at the stem so our plan for 2016 is to actually harvest those trees.

“That’s one way that we will be able to minimise the losses.”

Mr Khan said they had just completed a separate operation to prop up trees that were slanted as a result of the strong winds by Severe TC Winston.

“About 300 hectares of plantations had plants that were five years old and had slanted.

“So we had to go through quite a tedious exercise to prop them up and to do that, you had to prop up each tree and it took us a good three months and around 250 people to complete that.”

Mr Khan said it cost them money and a lot of hard work to complete the operation but it had to be done to ensure that the plants survived.