Forestry Demand - the current situation and anticipated developments

The main products exported from Tasmania are sawn timber and semi-processed wood products.

Woodchips and lower valued products are, in terms of overall volume and value, the dominant product exported from Tasmania, predominantly to Asia. Sawn timber that is not used locally is mainly traded to the eastern seaboard of Australia.

Changing global markets have a continuing impact on the Australian forest industry, however Tasmania has a strong competitive advantage in the Australian South-east Asian markets for timber and timber products. Our forests are situated close to ports and exhibit excellent timber quality and growth rates. Tasmania's forest industry is looking to continued expansion by increasing its volume and greater downstream processing. To achieve this, it needs continued secure supply of mature native timber as well as increased volumes from plantations.

Sawmilling

There are around seventy mills in the State processing native forest logs. However, most of these mills ar quite small and only a relative few have an input of 10,000 or more cubic metres per annum. The sawmilling sector has been limited b y resource availability, expecially as the private resource has been declining markedly in the last five years. There is significant demand in the market for the timbers that are produced from Tasmanian native forests and the trend in recent times is to target the more specialised high value products and not compete with the commodity grade structural products that are the domain of softwood plantation sawmillers.

In 2008, the softwood sawmilling industry underwent significant structural change with the opening of the Forest Enterprises Australia sawmill at Bell Bay. Shortly after one of the Gunns owned mills at Scottsdale closed. Tasmania is a relatively small producer of softwood in terms of Australian output.

Woodchips

Tasmanian eucalypt species are valued as a source of high quality fibre for paper making.

Harvesting of native forests for sawlogs produces considerable amount of wood in the form of sawmill and logging residues.

The use of native hardwood species to supply pulpwood for the pulp and paper industry commenced in the 1930s with the construction of pulp and paper mills at Boyer and Burnie.

The woodchip industry commenced in 1969 to supply Japanese paper mills. Sales have been subsequently made to China and other parts of Asia. The principal markets are still in Japan.

 Other wood products

The most notable recent development is the investment by Ta Ann in producing rotary peeled veneer. With the expanding resource of hardwood plantation logs coming online there is a prospect for further expansion of this product line.

The other main product is the range of 'special timbers', including blackwood and sassafras. These timbers are used for furniture, craft and decorative markets and represent an icon range of products for the State.

Paper and paper products

Tasmania has a long history of paper manufacture, being at the forefront of pulping technologies that used eucalypt for paper production. The paper industry has adapted and changed as both markets and resources have changed.

As the nature of the resource base is changing, with large areas of eucalypt plantation (principally Eucalyptus nitens and Eucalyptus globulus) due to come on line in the period 2015 to 2020, there is an opportunity for expansion in this sector.