Borneo Pulp

by John Francis Kinsella

At the end of a wet and windy month of June in Paris, Ennis flew out to Taipei together with Axelmann. They had by then signed up both the Finns and Germans, the result was a formidable line up of first class international businesses that formed the Barito consortium. It only remained for them to finalise their agreements with the Taiwanese and then Sutrawan in Jakarta.

  On arrival they were pleased to find the weather in Taipei much warmer compared to Paris, however they soon regretted the change, the sweltering humidity hung high in the nineties. They checked into the Ritz Hotel and called S.C.Gao. To their surprise he informed them that Sutrawan was in town, for the official opening of a new luxury hotel, where the Gao family had some vague financial connections. Gao invited them as his guests to the ceremonies that were to take place the following day.

  Ennis then called Lily, she was not at home or at the gallery, he left a message with his room number at the Ritz, and then left for Gao’s offices.

  Gao was clear and straight forward, he would not enter the consortium, but on the other hand was prepared to immediately sign a letter of engagement to take on the management of the mill on its completion and to market its products in all of Asia and Oceania. The only difficulty was his insistence that the prices be fixed in advance, an impossibility given the cyclic variations of pulp prices on the world market.

  They finally agreed that they would be indexed on North American export prices for paper pulp in US dollars, with a fixed scale of commissions and with a promise that Gao’s machinery manufacturing works be given a share in the subcontracting. In fact Gao had nothing to lose, management for a fee, marketing on a commission basis and a slice of the subcontracting. It was nothing less than a gift offered to Gao on a silver platter.

  They returned to the Ritz nonetheless satisfied with Gao’s engagement that was what Brodzski had wanted, even if the conditions were largely favourable to the Taiwanese. However, the agreement with Gao was part of the bait to lure a different kind of customer.

  With the main business settled, they agreed to meet him for the opening of the Shangri-La Palace Hotel, where he promised them a more interesting afternoon.

  At three o’clock prompt they were picked by Gao’s limousine. They were amused by the Cadillac and imagined that they would make a great impression by arriving at the hotel like VIPs. They could not have been more wrong, at least fifty such limousines were snarled up in the traffic in and around the main entrance to the hotel and its underground car park. It was more like an annual gathering of the Yakuzi, the Japanese organised crime syndicate.

  Their driver finally abandoned the idea of leaving them at the main entrance, forcing his way around the mass of cars, cursing the other drivers, and drove directly into the hotel garage. There they spent another fifteen minutes lost, until Gao found them. They took the lift up to the main lobby where a dense crowd of guests was milling around in what appeared to be an incredible confusion and cacophony.

  They were the only Europeans present in the spectacular lobby and were soon located by Danny Lau who directed them to Sutrawan’s group. After a long series of incomprehensible speeches by important looking elderly men who they supposed were shareholders, politicians, bankers and other dignitaries, they toasted to the successful future of the hotel. They were then invited as guests to Sutrawan’s table in a vast cavernous banqueting hall on the lower ground floor of the hotel. The hall was decorated with red and gold garlands and a blaze of extravagant flowers from well-wishers, each bouquet seeming to want to out do the next.

  At their table conversations remained polite with little allusion to business; it was evidently not the place, much too public. Sutrawan grinning almost evilly whispered to Ennis that everything had been settled and agreed between Gao and himself. He confirmed that he would meet them in Jakarta the following week for detailed discussions on the arrangements.

  They politely listened to another incomprehensible succession of speeches in Chinese, whilst Axelmann stabbed at the never-ending stream of delicacies that were placed before him with his chopsticks that he used as spears.

  Gao had told Ennis almost as a warning that Sutrawan was a play boy, but up until that point he had appeared to be nothing more than a good host to his guests, though he seemed to delight in laughing at the antics of Gao, who tried to avoid Sutrawan, preferring his own serious Taipei business clique.

  They finally returned to the Ritz happy to have escaped the never-ending inauguration. As they stepped out of the Cadillac, Ennis looked at his watch, it was only ten thirty, the afternoon had been long and they needed some light relaxation. They walked up the marble steps of the hotel entrance, wondering how they would spend the rest of the Friday evening, the doorman, dressed in Ritz style opened the door with a smile.

  ‘John!’

  Ennis looked up surprised. It was Lily.

  ‘Well, hello!’

  To his surprise and consternation she launched herself at him, embracing him with both arms around the neck, kissing him on the lips. He stepped back pushing up his glasses. Axelmann looked on with an air of astonishment.

  Ennis made the introductions, as Lily told him that she had received his messages, she had tried to catch him but he had been too elusive. As for herself, she had been at an antique fair in Taitung, a city on the coast to the south of Taipei. They made their way to the bar and sat down to decide their program for the remainder of the evening. She suggested the discotheque at the Hilton, laughing and explaining that it was generally lively and that perhaps Axelmann could find a friend.

  They returned very late to the Ritz having lost Axelmann. Lily proposed they pass the weekend together with a visit to the mystical Mount Ali Shan, a spectacular 3,997 metre high peak, situated in the Taiwan’s national park, in middle of the range of high mountains that ran from the north to the south of the island.

  In Jakarta the following Tuesday morning Ennis received a message from Danny Lau, who transmitted Sutrawan’s invitation to lunch and requested that he be on standby in the lobby at midday. Lunch was in a Chinese restaurant called the Jade Dragon; it was situated next to a long line of doubtful looking massage and go-go bars in a seedy area of the city.

  When they arrived Sutrawan was already present with several other persons. They were seated at a round Chinese table with a revolving centre; it was already loaded with food. Ennis saw the guests reaching out with their chopsticks and helping themselves from the steaming dishes. Sutrawan stood up beaming and greeted Ennis like an old and important friend grasping him by the hand and the elbow, offering him a seat on his right hand side, pouring him a large glass of cognac.

  As they ate, Sutrawan confirmed to him, that he had recently constructed a new paper mill on the outskirts of Jakarta at a place called Tangerang. In addition he owned a pulp mill in Sumatra, a mill producing over one hundred thousand tons of wood pulp a year.

  Ennis felt his hopes sinking; nobody had spoken of an existing pulp mill in Indonesia; it seemed to his dismay that Sutrawan was more than likely a competitor, than a potential partner.

  ‘What kind of pulp?’ Ennis asked him trying to hide his disappointment.

  ‘Short fibre, mixed tropical hardwoods,’ Sutrawan proudly replied. “We dismantled a complete mill in Taiwan and rebuilt it in the jungle, very low price!”

  ‘Interesting,’ Ennis said, then after a moments reflection replied, ‘Our project is for long fibre pulp!’

  Sutrawan was surprised; to his knowledge long fibre wood did not grow in Indonesian forests, at least not in any significant quantities.

  ‘How come?’ he said with an expression of disbelief.

  Ennis quickly discovered that Sutrawan had never heard of dacrydium, which Brodzski believed existed in large quantities in the forests of South and Central Kalimantan. It was a revelation for Sutrawan and Ennis saw that his curiosity had been aroused. Sutrawan was interested in any project provided there was no direct conflict of interests with his existing joint-ventures, if the project was complementary,
then it could always be of interest.

  Sutrawan knew the pulp business and whilst in his own mill Bintang Agung produced pulp, it was exclusively short fibre grade, to which had to be added long fibre pulp for making good quality paper. The long fibre pulp he imported from the USA or Scandinavia supplying his paper mill and its price was over forty percent more expensive than his own pulp or that he imported from Taiwan, which included hidden profits creamed off in Hongkong.

  The Indonesian paper industry was growing rapidly; they needed four hundred thousand tons of paper a year, excluding packaging and sack papers. Their mills had commenced paper making with imported wood pulp, a semi-finished product.

  The result was that the country was importing about 200 million dollars a year of paper pulp, plus another 150 million dollars of newsprint, packaging and paperboard.

  The market was growing at a rate of about ten percent annually and would continue to do so for a long time in view of the country’s large population of 180 million. With an illiteracy rate of thirty percent, the country needed paper as one of the main supports for its education and literacy program.

  Indonesians consumed about three kilos per person each year compared to the one hundred and sixty consumed by Europeans. It was not difficult to see why banks and industrialists were so interested by investments in the country’s forestry industries.

  In fact it was precisely for that reason that Antoine Brodzski had brought together his consortium of highly specialised industrialists. He knew his business well and had taken the decision to ensure there was a place for himself, sharing in the fortune that was to be made in the rapidly expanding economy of Indonesia.

  Sutrawan told Ennis he would like to see the pre-feasibility study and the method that had been used for estimating the standing stock of wood in the forest. He also wanted to know who Brodzski’s contacts at government level were, and what his own role would be, if he decided to invest in the project.

  Ennis accepted his invitation to visit his paper mill the following day to continue discussions, then joining him for dinner that same evening.

  Sutrawan’s paper mill had been well designed to the needs of Indonesia. It had been conceived based on Gao’s long years of experience in Taiwan. It was a small-scale old-fashioned version of a European mill, equipped with what Ennis considered quaint technology. The whole investment had been about ten million dollars for the first stage, and for the future extension of the mill, which would more than double its capacity; the total cost would not exceed twenty million dollars.

  Ennis saw at once that the level of technology would be one of Papcon’s major problems. European engineers only thought in terms of technical excellence and gigantism. It would be difficult for Scandinavians, conditioned by their own modern industrial standards, to design or conceive a plant that to their minds was forty years out of date, without the refinements required for cosseted workers, who were conditioned by their unions to demand work comforts, which certain did not even enjoy in their own homes.

  The result was that the cost of a European designed mill was several times greater, though better equipped, than a Taiwanese or Korean mill, and even the Japanese could design and construct a modest, low price mill, if that was what their customers wanted.

  Ennis praised Sutrawan’s mill, telling him it was an excellent model, though it could be seen to lack certain refinements by international industry standards. He formulated his observations in the most discrete manner that he could muster, as he felt it important to mark the point to justify certain future options.

  Ennis joined him that evening for dinner in a Japanese restaurant; it was a farewell party for staff returning home after a two-year mission in Indonesia. They were seated in Japanese fashion at a long low table in a private room, separated from the rest of the restaurant by the traditional bamboo and paper walls.

  The Sake and Cognac flowed whilst the guests joined in a kind of Karaoke, without the least restraint, each singing popular songs from his own country. Ennis regretted not having learnt the words of a single song, but not for long, he realised that those present would never know whether he sung in French, German or any other European language. He sang, simply improvising the words of songs that he vaguely knew, with his versions of Danny Boy and My Way to the delight of Sutrawan.

  The dinner developed into a three-cornered cognac-drinking match between the Taiwanese paper makers, the Japanese from a panel board manufacturing company and Ennis, encouraged by Sutrawan with cries of Gan bei. The young men had a certain macho air, they boasted their ability to resist the effects of XO, after each toast the glasses were turned upside down by the drinkers, to prove that they were really empty.

  A series of challenges were launched and in the final round Ennis remained facing a fierce looking Japanese aged about thirty. Incited by the cries the other guests, they clambered up onto the middle of table in their stockinged feet, eyeing each other, like a pair of Sumo wrestlers looking for grips, holding half pint glasses of cognac, whilst the others shouted drunken encouragements.

  On Sutrawan’s signal there was silence. They lifted their glasses and slowly started to down the XO, watching each other carefully to avoid drinking more than necessary if the other showed signs of weakness. The Japanese ran into difficulties as the halfway point neared, his eyes bulged with effort and revulsion, he had reached his limit, with the cognac overflowing from the sides of his glass and running down his chin and onto his Batik shirt he suddenly made desperate signs, he could not go on and abandoned the match staggering off the table, mopping his face that shone with transpiration and cognac.

  Ennis had won and to drive the point home, to his own surprise and that of everybody else, he downed the rest of his glass with a grin of triumph.

  He had made himself an instant reputation and entered into legend, in the eyes of Sutrawan and his friends. He waited for the inevitable kick from the cognac, expecting it at any moment; he had drunk almost a whole bottle in the space of two or three hours.

  He vaguely remembered having read of people dropping dead after such exploits, and after a suitable interval he excused himself and walked carefully to the mens room, hoping that in Roman fashion he could avoid the worse by throwing up the mass of cognac that lay like a time bomb in his stomach.

  However, he had not counted on the high class service of the restaurant; the toilets were luxuriously appointed, with female attendants in white kimonos, who waited behind him with steaming hot hand towels at the ready whilst he went through the motions of urinating.

  He looked desperately around at the cubicles, but after carefully studying them he realised that they offered no escape, the attendants would certainly hear his attempts at vomiting and would no doubt hurry to tell the restaurant manager, who in turn would immediately inform Sutrawan that one of the guests was having difficulties.

  Ennis returned to the banqueting room to face the music, he smiled nonchalantly; the alcohol was beginning to take effect. Suddenly, to his immense relief, the party broke up, much earlier than he would have expected, towards eleven. He was soon back in his hotel room, where almost at once he fell into a deep sleep, awoken the next morning by the bright sunlight that streamed into his bedroom, he looked at his watch, it was just after nine. To his great astonishment he had passed the night without the least problem, he felt almost no after effects apart from a slight feeling of light-headedness.

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