Wood Products
Woodchips
Woodchips from native forests are a product of integrated harvesting. In some regions, integrated harvesting has become the standard practice, particularly since the development of the export woodchip industry in 1970. It has provided the opportunity to use wood that would otherwise be largely wasted.
Photo:SAForestry
Integrated harvesting does not mean that every tree is harvested. Codes of Forest Practice in Australia ensure that within each harvested area, habitat trees and wildlife corridors are retained to provide habitat for the forest fauna, from which harvested areas can be recolonised.
Woodchips are a by-product of harvesting operations in both native forests and plantations, where parts of trees or even whole trees are below sawlog quality.
Sometimes trees or parts of trees need to be removed to allow young seedlings to grow properly. Sawmills also produce wood for woodchips through sawlog offcuts and waste byproducts.
While some woodchips are used for landscaping gardens, most are used for the manufacture of pulp, paper and panel products. Eucalypt woodchips provide pulp that has the necessary qualities for fine writing and printing paper, such as smoothness, opacity and ability to hold ink on the surface. Pine woodchips are used to make paper that is particularly suited for use as newsprint, tissue and cardboard.
Woodchip exports have grown over the last ten years and are a major component of Australia’s trade in wood and wood products. However, the volume of native timber woodchips exported for papermaking has fallen sharply because of the reduced levels of harvesting. There is also an increased availability of high quality pulpwood from plantations.
Case Study: Tree breeding programs to improve woodchips
Tasmanian researches are involved in a wide range of projects including tree - breeding programs focusing on improving the quality of woodchips and paper products for the future.
Photo: Gunns Plantation Limited
Traditionally trees were selected for plantation growing because they grew fast or tall. While these characteristics are important for saw logs, research is changing the tree selection process for trees specifically grown for pulpwood to more diverse areas such as better fibre yield (fibres per volume of wood) and higher quality fibres.
Research also includes developing new measurement techniques, which will enable better and more efficient ways of assessing the properties of trees while they stand in the forest.
Many of these research projects are conducted through the Gunn’s Fibre Technology Laboratory based in northwest Tasmania in cooperation with the CSIRO and the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), which is a partnership between the Federal Government, universities and industry.
