Q&A with Mark Holmes, APRIL2030 Thriving Landscapes Champion and Head of Fibre Operations at APRIL Group

Following a strategy of integrating APRIL2030 into our business operations, the APRIL2030 Steering Committee appointed business unit heads as Champions of each of the commitment pillars – Climate Positive, Thriving Landscapes, Inclusive Progress and Sustainable Growth.

This is the second in a series that shares the perspectives of these Champions who, since its launch in 2020, have led the integration of the APRIL2030 targets and performance indicators in forestry, manufacturing and other aspects of APRIL’s operations.

Here, Mark Holmes, Head of Fibre Operations at APRIL Group, discusses how APRIL is integrating nature and biodiversity protection into its approach to sustainable forest management to achieve its Thriving Landscapes targets commitments.

Mark Holmes, Head of Fibre Operations, APRIL Group

Q. Can you begin by summarizing your APRIL2030 Thriving Landscape targets?

“Our Thriving Landscapes commitment comprises five interconnected targets, spanning the production and protection aspects of our operations. On the side of nature and landscape protection these include investing in landscape conservation, funded by a levy of US$1 per tonne of plantation fibre delivered to the mill per year, ensuring zero net loss of conservation and restoration areas, and achieving biodiversity and other ecosystem benefits.

We also support wildlife protection and conservation in Indonesia, including endangered species through several partnerships and collaboration. On the production side, we are working to achieve a 50% gain in fiber plantation productivity, which increases our investment in conservation while reinforcing our commitment to no deforestation.”

Q. Can you explain more about APRIL’s unique production-protection approach?

“Our production-protection approach is foundational to the way we do sustainable forest management and long precedes the APRIL2030 agenda. It encapsulates a holistic view of the landscape that takes in both plantation and conservation and restoration areas, while enabling communities to have socio-economic opportunities. Key components are APRIL’s commitment to end deforestation in 2015, and our 1-for-1 pledge at the same time to conserve an equal area of land to our plantations.

The most valuable conservation land within our concessions is part of the Restorasi Ekosistem Riau (RER) conservation project – a spectacularly diverse area of peat swamp rainforest that is the size of Greater London. This area benefits from the physical protection provided by being surrounded by APRIL’s plantations, which act as a barrier to potential bad actors who would carry out illegal logging or poaching.

Our production-protection approach also has a financial component, whereby the business provides stable long-term funding to support our conservation goals.

We have formalized this through the dollar per tonne mechanism. For every tonne of plantation wood delivered to our mill, we assign a dollar to our forest conservation landscape, which supports all the resourcing required to protect and conserve high conservation value forest areas. This unique internal levy meant we were able to allocate almost US$15 million for conservation in 2024 alone and around US$ 67 million since 2020.”

Q. Your Thriving Landscapes targets are ambitious. How important is R&D to their achievement?

“In general, we are a science-based organization so R&D plays a significant role in much of our sustainability commitments. Increasing our productivity and plantation efficiency ensures we can produce more fibre from the same plantation footprint. This requires a significant investment in world class research, much of which is published in leading peer-reviewed journals with over 100 publications to date.

APRIL’s R&D team consists of more than 250 people, including 17 PhDs and 31 with Masters-level qualifications. Their focus is in the areas of advanced tree genetics, precision silviculture to ensure sustainable wood production, integrated pest management, sophisticated data integration and plantation monitoring using drones, fixed-wing aircraft and satellites. All this is brought together by meticulous planning that ensures operationally, the right compartments are planted, weeded, fertilized and harvested at the right time across around 475,000 hectares of plantation.

Separately, our peatland science research programme, with guidance from an Independent Peat Expert Working Group (IPEWG), does vital work to inform the sustainable management of the peatland landscapes we act as stewards to. That includes both conservation landscapes like RER and plantations. Research began in 2007, but the team was formally established in 2015 and now comprises 25 scientists and researchers, including three PhDs and six at Masters level. The team’s five main research publications had been cited 282 times in the scientific literature up to January 2025.”

Q. How do research developments translate into productivity improvements on the ground?

One highlight of our R&D work is the establishment of a clonal breeding programme for Acacia crassicarpa – the first in the world. Using advanced breeding techniques and field testing, we select the best clones (lines of genetically identical trees) that are best suited to thrive in different environmental conditions across our conditions. That way, we can match the trees with the right genetics to the right conditions — for example, in windier locations or those prone to flooding.

This genetic consistency also leads to uniform growth, better wood quality and more efficient processes for harvesting and transportation, which all contributes to higher productivity. We are now focusing on incrementally increasing the deployment of the best performing clones.”

Q. Beyond your concession boundaries, where else are your conservation funding resources applied?

“I’ve already mentioned RER which spans more than 150,000 hectares on Sumatra’s Kampar Peninsula and neighboring Padang Island. Its field teams and running costs – which were close to US$4m in 2023 – come out of the conservation fund. We have been actively restoring and protecting this vital area of tropical peat swamp forest, and the nature and biodiversity it supports since 2013, working alongside technical partners and local communities.

Beyond our concession boundaries, we have used the fund to support conservation projects managed by local communities. We have piloted community conservation partnerships totaling 30,000 hectares as part of a plan to incentivize the engagement of local communities in forest conservation. We have used our fund also to support conservation projects managed by others, such as the PT Restorasi Habitat Orangutan Indonesia (RHOI), a project in East Kalimantan Province that is protecting and restoring around 86,000 hectares that is home to orangutans.”