Market overview
New Zealand is the only Southern Hemisphere country that is reliant principally on pine plantations for its forest resource. However, pine timber has proven to lack the wood properties required for high strength and high value uses, and for many structural applications it requires chemical
treatment to ensure durability.
Current Hardwood Imports to New Zealand
For year ended June 2008, New Zealand imported 28,000 m3 of sawn hardwood timber and sleepers for a cost of over $31 million, while a further $241 million was spent on importing wooden furniture (MAF, 2008), with a significant component of this likely to made from tropical hardwood.
Tropical Harwood Trade
Internationally, while the trade in tropical hardwoods is unsustainable, demand continues unabated for valuable threatened timbers. Total production of tropical roundwood (logs) in ITTO producer countries totalled over 137 million m3 in 2006 (UNCDA, 2009). Much of this cut is from
unsustainably managed tropical rain forests, some of which is likely to have been logged illegally. However, many consumers, both in New Zealand and in our international markets, are demanding traceability on the products they purchase, including timber.
Political pressure for the NZ government to do something about this was reported last year when New Zealand came under international pressure to stop importing kwila/merbau (Intsia sp.) because of concerns about the illegal logging of forests in Indonesian-controlled West Papua and
in Papua New Guinea. The then Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Hon. Jim Anderton, agreed in principle that all kwila imports should carry a label stating whether the supplier can verify the wood is legally sourced. This resulted in a number of large hardware chain stores announcing
they would stop selling kwila when existing stocks run out (NZ Herald 18/8/08). Ironically, later in the year, OnTrack admitted they were purchasing greenheart (Ocotea rodiaei) sleepers for their rail network upgrade cut from South American rain forests.
Emerging Markets
Consumer demand for organic food is increasing in some of New Zealand’s international markets. However, organic wine and fruit growers are being required to look beyond the continued use of CCA-treated posts, due to the United States’ USDA National Organic Programme (NOP)
shunning treated posts for new installation or replacement purposes. New Zealand’s organic exports to the US are reported by BioGro New Zealand to be worth $40 million, so alternative posts are needed.
A select group of eucalypt timbers are renown for their colour, natural durability and strength. Historically, these were cut from native Australian old-growth forests, to supply both domestic and offshore markets, including New Zealand. Unsustainable harvesting of the most desirable
eucalypts lead to many of them being logged to exhaustion. Although large areas of old-growth remain, many of these now have high biodiversity values and have been set aside as conservation reserves. Consequently, few forests remain for logging to supply the traditional markets for highly
durable timber and this scarcity has ensured high price rises (Grealy, 2008).
While there are large areas of eucalypt plantations in several states of Australia, much of this is E. globulus for chip export. Since 1997, there has been a new focus on establishing plantations of high quality eucalypts for sawn timber to supply domestic Australian markets given that
traditional supplies, once logged from old-growth forests, are now greatly depleted (Bacon, 2007).
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