Production
The forest products industry group is Australia’s second largest manufacturing group, contributing over $18 billion per year and about 1% GDP to the nation’s economy. It is also responsible for directly employing around 137,000 Australians working in the forest management, logging, haulage and processing industries.
Photo: SAForestry
Australian forests produce over 27 million cubic metres of wood each year - over 60 per cent from plantations and the remainder from native forests. In general, most softwoods are supplied by plantations of exotic tree species, while most hardwoods come from native forests.
However, the area of both softwood and hardwood plantations in Australia is expected to rapidly increase over the next decade. Forecasts predict that softwood availability from plantations will increase from 12.9 million m3 to 15 million m3 per year between 2005 and 2009. Many of the nation’s hardwood plantations are relatively young and so hardwood availability is expected to increase almost tenfold, from about 1.1 million m3 per annum to 9 million m3 per annum in the 2005-09 period.
There are over a thousand sawmills currently operating in Australia. Three-quarters of these are hardwood mills, producing high value products in small volumes. The remainder are softwood sawmills, many at world-scale levels of production, producing timber predominantly used for structural manufacturing. Vertical integration into pulp and paper industries has stimulated a growing wood and paper manufacturing sector.
Australia’s large forest estates and harvests produce over three quarters of the forest products we use with the remainder imported. Forest product imports to meet consumer demand totalled more than $4 . billion in 2005 -06 and included mainly, by value, printing and writing papers. Exports during this period totalled over $2 billion and included mainly, by value, woodchips, paper and paperboard .
Case Study: Spotted gum taking the world by storm
Researchers from the Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries (DPI&F) are working in partnership with the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Wood Innovations, the timber industry and furniture manufacturers to improve export opportunities for spotted gum and other high-value timbers.
gum timber
Photo: Queensland Department
of Primary Industries
Although spotted gum has a distinctive grain and an exciting range of colours, furniture manufacturers in the past have had difficulties in producing quality products due to joint movement, which results from seasonal changes in moisture content and is a particular problem during transport overseas.
DPI&F has developed scientifically based recommendations for the design and use of Queensland spotted gum that guarantee quality and create new opportunities for the timber in high value European and Asian markets. At the same time, industrial designers from CRC Wood Innovations are using the data collected to design new and innovative spotted gum furniture to meet the consumer needs of different international markets, including Germany and Japan.
To read more information about the beautiful Karri timber see an article titled “The Colour of Karri” taken from In the living forest: an exploration of Australia’s forest community.
The Colour of Karri - (PDF - 104KB
