4 days ago
Forestry companies shift focus to pine to meet demand for housing timber
An increasing demand for timber to meet Australia's housing targets is set to drive a change in focus for one of Australia's largest forestry regions.
The Green Triangle, situated across the southern South Australia-Victorian border, has about 334,000 hectares of plantations, representing 17 per cent of Australia's forestry industry.
The region grows a mix of softwood timber, primarily used in domestic construction, and hardwood, which is often exported as wood chips and used in paper manufacturing.
But as Australia looks to meet its goal of building 1.2 million new homes by 2029, investment in softwood is growing fast.
"Both the state and the federal governments have incentives in place for industry and private investors to grow radiata pine," University of Melbourne forest ecologist Rod Keenan said.
"We are seeing an increasing area of pine being established now, and that's aimed at meeting that future need for timber for housing construction."
On Wednesday, Mount Gambier-based OneFortyOne announced it had purchased about 15,000ha of existing plantations in the Green Triangle and Western Australia.
The land was previously owned by investment management firm New Forests.
Hardwood blue gum plantations make up about 75 per cent of that new purchase.
OneFortyOne chief executive Wendy Norris said the company planned to convert the majority into softwood radiata pine within the next five years.
"The sawlog timber we're growing from our radiata pine is really high quality and the domestic market wants it," she said.
OneFortyOne also owns one of the largest timber processing mills in the region, which processes softwood for construction timber.
While housing demand is driving public and private investment in softwoods, Ms Norris said carbon credits played a role in planting more pine.
"Bluegum grows for about seven years and when you convert to radiata pine you grow your growing cycle to about 30 years," she said.
"You store a lot more carbon in the tree when you grow it for that long and you earn more carbon credits.
"That's part of the economic decision when you convert from blue gum to long-term renewable pine plantations."
Professor Keenan said climate change and drying conditions would play a role in forestry's future.
"The blue gums are typically quite water-hungry and some of the sites they were planted on are probably not that suitable for blue gum these days and becoming less suitable as the climate becomes drier," he said.
"The radiata pine is more tolerant of those dry conditions, so by replacing blue gum with pine, we're likely to see more resilient plantations to climate change."
South Australian Forest Products Association chief executive Nathan Paine said OneFortyOne's purchase bucked a recent trend.
"Over the past decade, when there have been large sales, we've seen that land revert to general agriculture and we've lost those forests," he said.
"It's a shot in the arm for these 21,300 South Australians who work directly and indirectly in forest industries in Australia."
Despite an industry trend towards timber for housing, Mr Paine said there was a future for blue gum in Australia.
"There has been a view more generally that hardwood or blue gum doesn't yield the same job multiplier in terms of the jobs that go to processing the trees and producing the products we need," he said.
"What industry is doing, though, is actually investing heavily in the alternatives to using blue gum domestically.
"I don't think we should underestimate the importance of bluegum fibre in a lot of products we use."
