Lack of value adding will apply to other industries; for example we send both iron ore and coking coal to Asia then buy back the steel made from our own ingredients, in the process decimating our domestic industry. Old growth logging seems to be preferred for finer grained timber than plantation wood. Perhaps the users should go back in a time machine some 400 years and plant more seedlings.

Apart from carbon credits we attach little value to the history of old growth forests as living museums. As some German visitors to Tasmania said 'we don't have any four hundred year old trees left to worry about'. We chop down those trees because they are considered to be of low value.

Whilst the raw numbers support the author's argument, drill a little deeper and you'll find there's wood, and there's wood. Wood products are selected for varying qualities and some of those qualities are very difficult to achieve in plantations and where achievable take longer to reach harvest than say pine. As somebody recently mentioned on TV, you can't provide all the worlds wood needs with softwood.

There are a number of techniques used overseas that can reduce the impact of logging in native forest, several of which haven't been permitted in Australia so far. There is no doubt that plantations will eventually cover all the niches of the timber market, but that time remains in the futur

What's all this nonsense about not logging native forests? They've been burnt and regrown over thousands of years, so why shouldn't they be logged and replanted?

Or is it because we think we know better than the aborigines?

There is something deliciously ironic about a Tasmanian student and former forest activist claiming that the wood products sector is failing because it doesn't value add enough.

While his point may contain an element of truth, a certain proposed pulpmill in the Tamar Valley that has seemingly now been shelved largely because of incessant opposition by forest activists and elements of local communities stands as Exhibit A in understanding why this may be the case.

Exhibit B could well be Ta Ann Tasmania, a company making veneers out of sub-sawlog grade logs that were formerly chipped and exported, which continues to be attacked by forest activists, including the sabotage of some of its international markets.

Other opportunities to value add exist, but given the politics attached to Australian forestry, particularly native forests but also increasingly plantations, there is an understandable disincentive for industrial investment. A large part of this revolves around the past refusal of most State Governments to guarantee a native hardwood resource base, and the consequent whittling away of available forests for the politically-expedient purpose of appeasing Green-left voters.

This, plus some genuine conservation needs have combined to drastically reduce the native hardwood resource in most states. For example in Victoria, the area of multiple use State forest being managed for long term timber supply has been reduced by around 70% since 1986.

To say that this has had no impact on the wood products sector is incomprehensible, but is perhaps understandable from forest activists trying to deflect attention from the socio-ecoonic damage they have wrought.

MWPOYNTER seems to know what he/she is talking about in regard to the forest products industry. I would just add the more general point that moaning about lack of value-adding to Australia’s primary products is common amongst politicians and the general population and rife within the left. But investing in value-adding is a commercial decision that ought to have nothing to do with pious sentiment. The industry people who have to make such decisions are often treated like simpletons unable to see the glorious value-adding opportunities that are obvious to the Russell Warmans of the world. Of course that’s nonsense. Those investors are business people who have to assess whether they can get more out of a value-adding activity than they put in (it’s called profit) and the associated risks etc. They are not idiots. They are the ones with ‘skin in the game’, indeed the only folk worth taking any notice of.

Further to my previous post:

As an earlier poster has noted, there are different types of woods, both in size classes and quality (ie. hardwoods and softwoods). It is therefore overly-simplistic to claim that we have all the wood we need based only on total volumes harvested.

In fact, our domestic shortage of high quality hardwood for decorative and durable uses is being overcome by imports of hardwoods from overseas forests, mostly tropical rainforests in developing countries where forest management can be problematic.

We may have plenty of hardwood plantations, but these are being overwhelmingly grown on short rotations under contractual arrangements for the export woodchip market. So they make little contribution to the demand for solid sawn hardwood.

In addition, the small proportion of hardwood plantations being grown for solid wood products are mostly producing little of a similar quality to that obtainable from slow grown native forests, and it may be many decades before they can make a significant contribution.

Finally though, the author's motivation for writing the article seems to be to further an agenda that we produce nothing from our forests. Why? After a century of increasingly regulated harvesting and evolving silviculture, there is nothing wrong with renewably producing wood from a minor portion of forests. The landscape-scale environmental impact is minor, and the economic activity associated with it underpins the capability to protect forests from their greatest threat which is fire. This is responsible environmental management that is far superior to to the management-free land grabs which most ENGOs are campaigning for.

MYPONITER ad Taswegian have already made excellent points. Several attempts have been made to value add and they have been scuttled.

We outsource because it;s too expensive or too difficult to do it here, that the commercial reality as Tommbee points out.

f the author sees clue adding as something he sees in a positive light, then perhaps advocating to allow industry to compete by making it simpler and cheaper for them to do so rather then simple "couchtivism" and move on.

I closed my small sawmilling business in Brisbane at the end of 2011 after 7 years in operation.

I was no longer able to cut and process logs for less than the value of the cut timber, despite having very low costs of feedlogs and a very low overhead operation and being able to selectively cut to maximise yield.

At the end I was getting less for my timber than I had at the start. I burnt over 100 tons of cut timber at the end, because the price I was offered was simply insulting.

Large mills with capital to invest in upgrading plant are given grants to assist, but a small operation has to stand or fall on its own.

Although such large mills are inefficient in terms of yield per log, they are very high turnover and even their waste is of sufficient volume to be attractive as a feed for other processes, including generating power for their own needs and conversion to manufactured boards, etc. A small mill like mine cannot do that, because there is not enough of anything to make it worth anybody's while to collect it, and because woodwaste is, believe or not, a noxious waste that must be strictly controlled to prevent off-site contamination, including the tannins that leach out when it is wet and dust when it is dry. Gasification to run small engines is a viable option, except that regulation makes it very hard.

The article didn't mention imports, but I know one firm here in brisbane that imports 20 containers of dressed Kwila/merbau from PNG monthly, with 20 cubic meters of first grade timber in each and is supply-side driven, so sells aggressively and competes hard on price.

It's a mug's game.

Not only is Russell Warman part of the problem, but he doesn't know one piece of wood from another. He thinks all wood is the same, and he is using statistics in a perverted manner to express a prejudice against the native forest timber industry from the position of an environmental zealot. I hope UTAS does not diminish its reputation by giving him a pass without subjecting his work to a real world evaluation.
His thrust is to suggest all timber requirements can be met from plantation timber, but that is not the case. He would like to suggest there is no need to harvest any native forest timber, but I strongly disagree. The fact is that no plantation can economically replicate the qualities of timber of particular species for particular purposes and give a viable return within a reasonable timeframe. This is particularly the case in Warman's adopted state of Tasmania, and among the particular uses to which the highly decorative species of Special Timbers are put for a high-value return. The same results could never be achieved with his preferred plantation species, and nor would they meet the specific requirements of the boat builders who have such iconic status in the state that hosts the second largest wooden boat festival on the planet every two years, and the one that has an iconic retailing sector catering for tourists that owes its existence to the fact that visitors instantly recognise the uniqueness and value of unusual decorative timbers in quality products, and are prepared to pay significantly more for them than similar products. His impoverished position deserves nothing but derision, especially for the fact that much government money has been spent redirecting the timber industry towards plantations at the insistence of organisations of the ones in which he has put much effort as an activist. Heaven forbid he gets a job as a political adviser.

Sorry MWPoynter, I didn't read your last before posting, but I see you've made many of the same points.

The best place to grow timber is in a natural forest, using sunlight (solar energy) to power a process that creates wood called photo synthesis turning carbon dioxide and water into trees that can provide timber for furniture, shelter, fibre and hygenic tissue. Timber stores the solar energy and carbon for the life of the product, the regenerated harvested forest starts the process again.

The next best place to grow timber is in plantations but as has been pointed out by the greens and foresters alike:

“Plantations are monoculture – the trees are planted in straight lines, there is limited biodiversity, and chemicals are applied to protect and fertilise the crop. They are typically planted on short rotations of 12 to 15 years to produce pulp and up to 25 years for sawlogs.

“Regenerated forests on the other hand are chemical free, regenerated using processes that mimic nature and have a suite of biodiversity values.

“They are managed to produce high quality sawlog and veneer, with longer rotations of between 80 and 90 years, and in the case of the Special Timber Zone, 200 years."

See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP6XCailI-A it shows a clear felled burnt and sown regenerated forest that produced export woodchips, high and low quality sawlogs, and special species timber for craft and furniture designers, as well as jobs in the forest, in transport, in processing and value adding as well as retailing, house building and tourism!.

The forest was listed last week for its outstanding universal value as part of the pristine Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area!

Sorry, Russell, but you can't see the logs for the trees! Here in WA, the vast majority of hardwood plantation timber is used to produce woodchips for paper and cardboard. Conversely, it is only the native forest hardwood timbers of jarrah, marri, tuart, wandoo, blackbutt and karri that are turned into fine furniture and similar high value wood uses. The only true competition between timbers from plantations and native forest is in structural timbers, veneer and flooring/decking, with plantation pine (usually after treatment to prevent fungal rot and termite attack) competing with jarrah (untreated as it naturally resists fungi and termites).
Overall, therefore, your continual reference to 'logs' is largely irrelevant in the debate about native forest versus plantation timber harvesting. I suggest you make a clear distinction between the uses and hence values of logs rather than lumping them all into the same wood heap if you want your PhD thesis to be accepted as an accurate and relevant study of the causes and implications of transition of wood production from native forests to plantations.
By the way, in WA, it takes about 20 years to produce a hardwood plantation log for woodchip production but about 100 years for karri and 150 years for jarrah in our native forests. The economics of growing plantation timber is such that very few landowners have the patience or financial capacity to wait 40 or so years for plantation hardwoods to produce sawmill logs. If logging of native forests can be done sustainably (as they are at present), then the large areas of native forests in WA are well suited to this long rotation period and the production of unique native forest hardwood timbers for high value sawn timber uses.