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.
Potential agricultural use
Our programme started with the objective to genetically improve species that are suitable for use as untreated hardwood posts to replace CCA treated pine in New Zealand vineyards. However, there are many other agricultural structures where an alternative
to treated posts could be used including kiwifruit, pipfruit and stone fruit trellis as well as fences and farm buildings.
Consumer demand for organic food is increasing in some of New Zealand’s international markets and now 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.
We want to support landowners that are keen to grow and mill their own durable eucalypt timber
for their own use. They can be planted in farm shelterbelts/woodlots and thinned for fence posts for on farm use reducing carbon emissions and energy consumption.
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.
Emerging Markets
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).
|
