WITH national and global demand for wood products set to quadruple by 2050, a peak forestry organisation has committed to utilising its resources and understanding new opportunities to expand its plantation timber base.
The Green Triangle Forest Industries Hub (GTFIH) plans to set up a new partnership with landowners to realise growing market opportunities.
Forestry hub chair Cam MacDonald said for 12-months the industry has been investigating the consolidation of its existing available resource in a bid to achieve 100 per cent utilisation.
“Our study has illustrated that current demand for the region’s resource exceeds supply by 600,000 m3 annually,” Mr MacDonald said.
“The gap between supply and demand is continually growing.
“Our existing plans and developments will absorb almost all of the available and suitable softwood plantation resource with demand anticipated to grow to 1.6 m3 over the next decade, unless additional production and processing capacity comes online.”
The GTFIH recruited two of the countries leading industry experts, IndustryEdge managing director Tim Woods and Sylva Systems managing director Braden Jenkin, to assist in building new strategies to understand how to meet this growing market demand.
He said the industry was also eager to explore how it can utilise existing hardwood resources which was all currently exported to manufacture wood-based domestic building products.
“There is also opportunity to use this fibre to supply Australia’s growing demand for wooden packaging and industrial products creating new jobs for the future,” Mr MacDonald said.
He said collectively the research was providing a new business pathway for the industry to explore opportunities to create new wood products and grow its plantation estate.
Tickets are now available to the Trees into Farming launch on December 2 as part of the University of South Australia public lecture series at the Mount Gambier campus.
