In October 2007, a month before the federal election, the then Minister for Forests, Senator Eric Abetz gave the opening address to a national conference entitled Plantation Eucalypts for High-value Timber.
It is another wordy report packed with over-blown optimism from the politician and the inevitable caveat of caution and uncertainty from the foresters.
From the Executive Summary:
“Australia has a well-developed plantation-based softwood solid-timber industry; although there are significant eucalypt (hardwood) plantations they almost entirely target the pulpwood market.”
“There must be evidence that long-rotation hardwood plantations are commercially viable, with policy and investment structures … [but] returns must be equivalent to or better than those from pulp or agriculture … attention to increase investment in high value eucalypt plantations.”
“A key recommendation: government should commit to a clear strategy for the forest industry to move from reliance on native-forest to plantation-grown timber, and to develop the associated skilled workforce and processing infrastructure.”
Senator Abetz was upbeat at the industry moving forward:
“Although it is forecast that timber supply from hardwood plantations will grow four-fold to almost 14 million cubic metres in 2010, very little of this will be used in high-value, solid-wood products. On current projections, by 2040 Australia’s hardwood plantations will supply only about half of the volume of sawlogs currently harvested from our native forests.”
The Senator went on:
“Of course, growing long-rotation plantation eucalypts for sawlogs is not new in Australia, or indeed the World. It is currently being done successfully in South America, South Africa, Spain and Portugal, and I hope it will expand in Australia as a result of the new taxation arrangements for plantations.
“I am referring to two relatively new developments in this country which will enable plantation eucalypts, initially intended to be exported as woodchips, to be processed in Australia for high-value structural products.
“One company already achieving this outcome is Forest Enterprises Australia in my home state of Tasmania. To maximise the value from its plantation resources, FEA established a small sawmill with a Scandinavian ‘HewSaw’ that is particularly suited to small-diameter sawlogs. Using short-rotation (14–15 y) plantation-grown Eucalyptus nitens, they produce structural (house frames and trusses) and flooring timber, branded ‘EcoAsh’.
“This venture has been so successful that FEA have recently begun the development of a new, much larger sawmill in Georgetown, on the old Carter Holt Harvey MDF mill site. The new sawmill will use the same Hewsaw technology as the pilot Bell Bay mill, but will have an annual processing capacity of 600 000 m3
.
And in Western Australia (WA), a new company, Lignor, is developing a facility at Mirambeena, near Albany, to produce engineered strand lumber (ESL) and engineered strand board (ESB) from plantation eucalypts.
Engineered strand lumber and engineered strand board are produced by slicing logs into small flakes which are then recombined with resins and aligned to produce very strong structural beams or panels. Lignor will primarily use plantation blue gum (E. globulus) timber, but also plans to use some thinnings and residues from WA’s native forests. The proposed plant will be the first in the world to apply engineered strand lumber technology to eucalypts. Lignor has patented the technology in Australia and key international markets. The facility is expected to open in 2008 and to create 150 full-time equivalent jobs when it reaches full production in 2010. Development of the new facility is expected to cost an estimated $200 million.”
Following on after the Minister for Forest, what did senior forest scientists have to say?
Peter Volker from Forestry Tasmania and the CRC for Forestry told the conference:
“The forest industry in Australia has been growing eucalypts in plantations on an industrial scale for less than 30 years. Most of these plantations are destined for the pulp and paper industry for domestic or, more usually, international processing.
“Plantation hardwood products will need to demonstrate advantages in utility or appearance compared with softwood products to differentiate them in the market place. FEA has already shown that utilisation of small-diameter logs from unpruned E. nitens stands is commercially viable and acceptable in the market, as exemplified by the success of EcoAsh.
“The message is that while the early results from processing the ‘southern’ plantation species such as E. globulus and E. nitens are encouraging, there is still a lot we need to learn. Included in this is the effect of silviculture on wood quality (tension wood, density and other traits), eccentric stem shape, wind-throw and post-harvesting issues of end-splitting.”
[To be continued]
• Link to High Value Sawlog from Plantation report, 2007: here
