Keith Cumming's Arboline nursery in Hamilton, Vic, has more than one million bluegum seedlings that are slowly dying, costing him hundreds of thousands of dollars, following the failure of the two largest managed investment scheme operators, Timbercorp and Great Southern.
"The water was turned off in August," Cumming told The Australian Financial Review. "Great Southern does not have the money to prepare the land for planting. We are just letting [trees] die slowly and they will become part of the compost."
Cumming says he does not have any great hopes of seeing the combined $140,000 in unpaid bills from Timbercorp and Great Southern.
"The loss will be about 10 per cent of our turnover and that's our profit gone for the year," he says.
It's crunch time for both Timbercorp and Great Southern, which are working to a September 30 deadline - when both companies run out of funds.
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