About Plantation Forestry
World demand
As world demand for forest products is increasing, supply is becoming more restricted. Global market assessments point to faster growth in the demand for wood relative to supply over the next 25 years.
Alternative to native forests
The world's natural forest area is declining and environmental constraints are impacting heavily on large areas of existing production forest. As a result, man-made plantations are being called upon to play a greater role in world industrial wood supply.
A viable alternative to harvesting Australia's native forest resource is the supply of timber from plantations. These plantations contain either softwood or hardwood trees. The current taxation treatment of ethical investments in such plantations encourages private sector investment.
Government support
Industry policy settings such as The National Forest Policy Statement (1992), the Wood and Paper Industry Strategy (1995) and the Plantations for Australia: The 2020 Vision (1997 and the 2002 revision), collectively provide a sound platform for expanding Australia's plantation based forest industry.
Australia has over 1.7 million hectares of timber plantations. Governments and industry share a goal of expanding this to 3 million hectares by the year 2020 through the ‘Plantations for Australia: The 2020 Vision' strategy.
Environmental benefits
Sequestering carbon through expanded commercially driven plantation forestry activity will be a central aspect of Australia's response to its international obligations to combat global warming. The role of plantations in acting as 'sinks' for the storage of carbon is now recognised as a key tool in the overall strategy to reduce atmospheric carbon levels.
In addition to this, increasingly it is being recognised that the solution to major environmental problems such as land and water salinisation will depend to a significant degree on our ability to collate, coordinate and implement our science with strategies that make profits at the same time as restoring the environment.
Established timber markets
Commodity timber markets are increasingly supplied by plantation timber, which now accounts for approximately 70% of domestic sawn timber markets.
Softwood continues to replace hardwood in the traditional markets, most importantly in house-framing and other construction activities.
The total harvest volume in Australia was traditionally split 30% softwood and 70% hardwood, however, this relationship began to change about 10 years ago, and now softwood accounts for more than 75% of the total sawlog harvest in Australia.
The primary use of softwood sawlogs sold in Australia is the production of structural sawn timber used in housing construction. Demand for sawn timber is highly correlated with new housing demand. In recent years increased activity in household extensions and renovations has also acted to expand timber consumption. Timber frames now account for more than 90% of new house frames in Australia.