It is native-forest sawmillers that have suffered the most from competition from the softwood plantations. Cheap native-forest logs could not counter the plantation sector’s advantages of scale economies and new product development.
Source: Ajani 2007 (Figures 4.2 & 5.3) and updated using ABARE Forest and Wood Products Statistics
Note: ABARE data since 2000, using a changed methodology, are presented separately. Plantation production since 2001 includes a small volume of native forest cypress.
Wood-based panels are rarely mentioned, despite being an Australian forestry-industry success story.[4] Most forestry-industry analysis separates sawn timber from wood-based panels and then shines the spotlight on sawn timber. The public forest debate ignores wood-based panels. Yet, these panels compete against native forest and plantation sawn timber in many markets and, together with non-wood substitutes such as concrete and bricks, have contributed to the flattening in sawn-timber consumption in developed countries and lacklustre sawn-timber consumption in developing countries.
In the Australian forest debate, the plantation processors’ achievements remain a largely untold story. Whilst the native-forest sawmillers attributed their demise to conservation reserves and environmentalists focus on unsustainable logging, the softwood-plantation processors concentrated on building market share largely through displacing native-forest sawn timber in the Australian market. Their output of sawn timber and wood-based panels has increased by 145 per cent since 1990 (Table 3). They achieved this by displacing Australian native forest sawn timber and imports whilst boosting net industry output. Today, Australia produces 65 per cent more sawn timber and wood-based panels than in 1990. In the big picture, the decline in native-forest sawmilling has occurred less because of native-forest protection and more in the wake of the expansion of plantation processing: an industry outcome government unwittingly set in place many decades ago when it financed an Australia-wide escalation in softwood planting.
|
Year ending June 1990 |
Year ending June 2007 |
% change |
|
|
Plantation |
|||
|
Sawn timber |
1.27 |
3.89 |
+206 |
|
Wood-based panels |
1.03 |
1.75 |
+70 |
|
Total |
2.30 |
5.64 |
+145 |
|
Native forest |
|||
|
Sawn timber |
1.75 |
1.17 |
-33 |
|
Wood-based panels |
0.12 |
0.08 |
-33 |
|
Total |
1.87 |
1.25 |
-33 |
|
Total |
4.17 |
6.89 |
+65 |
Source: Ajani 2008; Ajani 2002 (following methodology as described in section 8)
[4] Wood-based panels, such as particleboard, medium-density fibreboard and plywood, are made by compressing and gluing particles or pieces of wood. They compete against sawn timber and non-wood products and, in Australia, are made primarily with plantation wood.