So stupid it’s funny!

Posted on March 12, 2023 | 1 comment

https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/forest-products-commission/farm-forestry-assist

This is hilarious and so characteristic of forest industry thinking in Australia.

The Western Australian Forest Products Commission FPC (State forest agency) is offering free/low cost pine seedlings to farmers to establish pine plantations.

Western Australia is shutting down its public native forestry next year (2024), and its small softwood plantation industry is shrinking due to loss of plantation resource (due to a number of factors). The vast majority of Western Australia’s softwood plantations are government owned, and there is only one softwood sawmill called Wespine.

https://www.wespine.com.au/

Westpine is 50% owned by Wesfarmers, one of Australia’s biggest companies.

https://www.wesfarmers.com.au/

As far as I’m aware there are no other markets for softwood logs in Western Australia, not even log export.

The Western Australian government wants to grow the softwood plantation industry to help maintain the competitive viability of the existing industry.

But there is the flawed thinking!

The Western Australian government wants farmers to grow Radiata pine to then sell to a monopoly buyer whilst competing against the government who dominant the pine log market!

Now what farmer is going to fall for a scam like that?

The whole focus of government policy is industry support (ie. corporate welfare).

The focus of government policy should be on profitable tree growing not corporate welfare. Even if tree growing were profitable it would still take enormous effort to convince farmers to make the 30+ year investment in tree growing.

My other observation is that Wespine is your typical sawmiller. They take absolutely no responsibility for their own future in terms of log supply and company growth.

Go to the Wespine website and see if there is any engagement with the farming/tree-grower community.

  • How much is Wespine willing to pay growers for pine logs?
  • What is the condition of current markets?
  • What are Wespines plans for the future?
  • How is Wespine supporting, encouraging and rewarding tree growers?

Nothing but a deafening silence!!

The Western Australian softwood industry has no future under current government and industry policy and thinking.

It is completely laughable!

So dear readers, tell me your ideas about how Western Australia should grow its softwood plantation industry. Does it have a future?

1 Comment

Posted in Commentary

Tagged , , , ,

Running Scared – the Rentseeker’s Strategy

Posted on February 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

Warning! Murdoch subscription required!

https://www.themercury.com.au/news/opinion/tasmanian-specialty-timbers-alliance-president-andrew-denman-says-sustainable-timber-tasmania-no-longer-fit-to-manage-our-precious-resources/

For the past 30+ years we have been told by politicians and the forest industry that Tasmania’s public native forest industry is 100% sustainable and internationally certified (PEFC/Responsible Wood).

We have been told that ad nauseam!

But few people outside politics and the forest industry now believe the story anymore.

We have been told a lie!!

Never mind the incredible cost to Tasmanian taxpayers and our public forests.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/29/tasmanian-forest-agreement-delivers-13bn-losses-in-giant-on-taxpayers

So we now hear that the so called special timbers industry is running out of oldgrowth timbers.

If half of what Mr Denman says of Government policy and STT management is true then Tasmanians should have no faith in either their politicians or their public servants.

With the Tasmanian public native forest industry likely to be shut down within the next 10 years, the special timbers industry are now crying poor. They want to quarantine their special timbers forest welfare from the closure of STT by creating a new government authority just for their welfare.

This article in The Mercury newspaper Tuesday 7th February is perfectly timed just a few days before the start of the Australian Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart. It wouldn’t surprise me if a deal has already been stitched up with the Tasmanian State government to establish a Special Timbers Authority, and the Premier will announce it at the Festival this weekend.

The idea that the politicians who created this mess are now going to fix it is utterly laughable!!

And of course the subtext for this article is that if this proposal doesn’t happen then the wooden boat festival will cease to exist. As I said in my previous blog the Tasmanian government and the Tasmanian community are being held to ransom by the wooden boat community and the rest of the special timbers rentseekers.

“The failure [of the government] to follow through with an implementation strategy, coupled with a failure to ensure that their GBE [ie. STT] was fulfilling its special timbers role….” says enough! For the Government, special timbers is just another political football to gain votes at election time, nothing else!! All promise! No delivery!! And the wooden boat community expect this to change?

The plundering of Tasmania’s oldgrowth forests will continue for many years yet it seems. National Parks and Reserves will not be safe either I suspect.

Mr Denman deliberately ignores the cost to the Tasmanian taxpayer and to Tasmanias oldgrowth forests. Matters of welfare and plunder are apparently unimportant to the wooden boat community.

There is no scientific, economic or social model on which the Special Timbers Authority can stand. It is a smoke screen for plunder-as-usual!

“Most people in the special timbers sector and most of the public would support forests managed for long-term selective harvesting and wise use of small volumes of special timbers”. I would love to see where Mr Denman gets his data for such a grandiose statement. Given the history of politics and the forest industry in Tasmania that really is utter delusion!

“Any such [special timbers] authority would be small, fit-for-purpose and self-funded through log royalties, a simple solution that would work for the sector”. I would classify that statement as a blatant lie!

Industry Felled by greed, ignorance, corruption and politics, and that includes every single forest welfare recipient/rentseeker.

The idea of cutting down 500-1000+ year-old trees to satisfy a handful of boat owners in the 21st century is insanity writ large. Welcome to Tasmania!

With this article in The Mercury newspaper the Australian Wooden Boat Festival has deliberately and intentionally march into the forest war zone! Both the Australian Wooden Boat Festival and the Special Timbers Authority will become the focus of community protest and demonstration. That is 100% guaranteed and apparently what the wooden boat community wishes.

Leave a comment

Posted in Australian Wooden Boat Festival, Sustainable Timbers Tasmania

Tagged

Australian Wooden Boat Festival

Posted on February 6, 2023 | 3 comments

Forum: The Future of Boatbuilding Wood

Sunday 12th February 2023 10.00 – 12.00pm

The Wood Supply Forum, chaired by AWBF Board member Scott Rankin, will explore achievable, pragmatic options to ensure a small sustainable supply of boatbuilding timber into the future. Without high quality boat building timber supplies, the future of the AWBF is in jeopardy. The forum will examine the beauty of Tasmania’s world class timber, projected future supplies and what boat builders are doing to obtain supplies.

Australian National Maritime Museum Wooden Boat Symposium

There is one statement in the above paragraph that is correct. The rest is wishful thinking and a 100% guarantee that the AWBF has NO future.

At least here we have a rare example of a timber-based organisation that is even prepared to think about where their wood comes from. It may be complete delusion but at least they score a point for trying.

This forum will obviously be nothing but a soap box for pushing the continuing plunder of Tasmania’s endangered old growth forests, with all the attendant political corruption, conflict, protest and waste of taxpayers money.

The Wooden Boat Festival is setting itself up for a conflict with the community that they cannot win.

The Wooden Boat Festival will become a focus for protest and demonstration.

The future of wooden boats is in private plantations, not logging public native old growth forest at taxpayers expense.

Timbers suitable for building wooden boats can be grown in plantations. They will be different timbers, but that is the only viable future.

It will be up to the wooden boat community to organise and engage with the rural community to get these plantations established and growing.

Will the wooden boat community continue down the road to forest conflict or will it change course?

One possibility is that the Wooden Boat Festival organisers will play politics and threaten to close down the Festival unless the State government continues to allow old growth logging at taxpayers expense. That would be a typical Tasmanian political strategy. We have been there before, holding Tasmania’s forests and Tasmanian taxpayers to ransom.

I fully support the Wooden Boat Festival, but not if it comes at the expense of Tasmania’s public native forests and taxpayers.

3 Comments

Posted in Australian Wooden Boat Festival

WANTED: Blackwood logs

Posted on August 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

I have received a request from someone looking to buy small numbers of blackwood logs for furniture building.

The logs must be:

LENGTH: Minimum 800mm, 1500mm or longer.

DIAMETER: Minimum 300mm diameter.

GRAIN: Straight grain.

 and Green, not dry!

If you have logs that are suitable please contact:

Tony Frangou

m: 0438131646

tonyestelle@aapt.net.au

Leave a comment

Posted in Furniture, Wanted

IST Tender Results 2021-22

Posted on June 22, 2022 | 2 comments

This is my annual summary of Island Specialty Timbers (IST) log tender results.

Island Specialty Timbers is the only source of competitive, transparent log prices anywhere in Australia, including blackwood sawlog prices.

That simple statement tells us a great deal about the dire condition of the forest industry in Australia.

https://www.islandspecialtytimbers.com.au/

IST is a business enterprise of Sustainable Timber Tasmania (STT) which sources and retails raw material of Tasmanian specialty timbers from harvest or salvage operations conducted on State owned Permanent Timber Production Zone land (PTPZl).

IST is not really a “business” just as the State forest agency Sustainable Timber Tasmania is not a business either. Logging of public native forest in Tasmania requires significant taxpayer subsidies every year.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/29/tasmanian-forest-agreement-delivers-13bn-losses-in-giant-on-taxpayers

You can read my previous annual tender summaries here:

https://blackwoodgrowers.com.au/?s=tender

IST conducted 10 log tenders during the year with 286 cubic metres of special species logs put to public tender.  Tasmania defines “special species” as any native forest timber apart from plain grain Tasmanian oak.

Blackwood Results

This is the important bit……

2022 was another champagne year for blackwood, continuing the strong market demand and prices from 2021.

2021 was the year that plain-grain blackwood sawlog broke the $1,000 per cubic metre price barrier. 2022 continued that trend with a record price of $1,150 per cubic metre.

The chart below shows blackwood sales results for the year.

A total of 15 blackwood logs (21.7 cubic metres) were put to tender this year, all of it plain grain. All logs were sold, for an average price of $643 per cubic metre, or a total of $13,950. Average log volume was 1.45 cubic metres – a good size sawlog!

A stand-out result for the year was a massive 2.46 cubic metre blackwood log that sold for $925 per cubic metre, with a total price of $2,276!

The above chart shows a return to strong demand and strong prices for quality plain grain blackwood sawlogs following the pandemic year of 2019-20, with maximum and average prices showing strong increases.

This is the greatest volume of blackwood that IST has put to tender for quite some time, despite the fact that blackwood makes up more than 90% of special species harvested from public native forest in Tasmania. Generally ~9,000 cubic metres of blackwood is harvested annually with 99.999% being sold at heavily discounted Government prices on long term sales contracts.

The Tasmanian government dominates and undermines the blackwood log and timber market. These log tender results need to be interpreted bearing this fact in mind.

Premium plain grain sawlogs are what can be grown in blackwood plantations.

Will this result capture the attention and imagination of Tasmanian farmers?

The following chart shows the average size characteristics of plain grain blackwood logs sold at IST tender. The target sawlog from a blackwood plantation has a volume of 1.5 cubic metres and a small end diameter (SED) of around 50 cm.

Remember these IST tender sales represent tiny log volumes sold into the small southern Tasmanian market. They represent mill door prices not stumpages.

Imagine if IST put 10 cubic metres of blackwood sawlog at each tender (100 cubic metres per year) to attract mainland and maybe even overseas buyers.

Imagine if State government forest policy was about profitable tree growers and not sawmill welfare.

Imagine what that change would do for the forest industry and Tasmanian farmers!

These positive blackwood log market signals should be resulting in more blackwood plantations being established, helping to build the industry and make Tasmanian farmers more profitable.

One hectare of well managed blackwood plantation has the potential to produce approx 300 cubic metres of premium sawlog after 30 – 35 years. At $1,000 per cubic metre that equates to $300,000 per ha in todays market.

General Results

Overall IST put 286 cubic metres of specialty timbers to tender in 2021-22 of which 13.8 cubic metres was not sold. Total tender revenue was $230,400.

Last year Sustainable Timbers Tasmania sold 8,825 cubic metres of specialty timbers, so these competitive tender sales represent a mere 3% of specialty timber sales from public native forests in Tasmania.

https://www.sttas.com.au/

With the exception of the July 2021 and May 2022 tenders, the tender results were poor with maximum and average prices well down on previous years (see chart below).

The July 2021 tender was dominated by Black heart sassafras logs which generally attract high prices, whilst the May 2022 tender was dominated by Black heart sassafras, Tiger myrtle and figured Huon pine, all of which are premium species attracting premium prices. These tender results show that the market is still prepared to pay premium prices for rare, quality logs.

It was at the latter tender that a new record IST tender price was set for a special species sawlog. This log was a 0.94 cubic metre Tiger myrtle log that sold for $6,100 per cubic metre, total price $5,734!

The following chart shows the volume and price summary for 57 log tenders back to 2015.

The tiny volumes and wide variability in species and quality of logs that IST put to tender makes assessing market trends over time difficult.

The next chart shows the average volume of the sold logs. Here there is a clear trend of diminishing log size. If it wasn’t for the occasional large eucalypt log IST throws into the tender mix, this trend of diminishing log size would be even more pronounced. The last 12 months shows a steady decline in log size so it is not surprising that prices have reflected a general decline in log quality.

The following 2 charts show the above data summarised by year:

Continuing the trend from last year 2021-22 saw a “significant” volume of specialty species logs put to tender. Despite the higher volumes, average prices have declined, probably in part due to declining log quality.

The average price for all species put to tender in 2022 was $844 per cubic metre, well down from $1,043 per cubic metre in 2021.

The above chart shows a steady rise over the last 4 years in the maximum price paid for these dwindling ancient timber resources, whilst average and minimum prices remain relatively steady.

The main focus of IST tenders is black heart sassafras (Atherosperma moschatum) which can command very high prices for good logs. It made up 35% of log volume put to tender in 2022.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherosperma

However the tree is slow growing (500+ years to reach commercial size) and is restricted to rainforest and old growth eucalypt forest, so supplies of this species are dwindling.

Blackwood made up just 8% of the volume IST put to tender.

Unfortunately the marketplace continues to show strong support for the plundering of the last of Tasmania’s ancient forests!

2 Comments

Posted in Island Specialty Timbers, Markets, Prices, Sustainable Timbers Tasmania

Through the Looking-Glass

Posted on February 21, 2022 | 2 comments

Last Friday 18th February I attended a workshop run by Private Forests Tasmania (PFT) to review the current PFT Draft Strategic Plan.

https://www.treealliance.com.au/

I have been to these kinds of industry meetings before and am familiar with the conversations and outcomes.

I went along with no expectations.

Sadly I was not disappointed!!

Entering the workshop I felt very like Alice climbing through the looking-glass. I felt reality snap.

I looked around expecting to see the Mad Hatter. Thankfully the Minister had not been invited.

https://www.guybarnett.com.au/

Having politicians at forest industry meetings is a guarantee that reality is absent.

In any forest industry meeting the elephants in the room always out numbers the humans. There are so many topics and issues that are deliberately avoided.

At the end of the workshop I was overwhelmed by the confirmation bias. People in the forest industry are still more or less thinking the same thoughts and saying the same things they were 40 years ago, despite the fact the forest industry is in critical decline.

Confirmation bias: ignoring the facts we don’t fancy

As much as I tried to throw new ideas into the discussion they were for the most part heavily resisted.

It wasn’t all bad. Some new ideas are slowly creeping into the industry, but they are slow, and few and far between.

Just two examples will suffice here:

  1. The draft PFT Strategic Plan mentions the word “sustainable” four times, but the word “profit” (as in profitable tree growing) is completely absent. My push to have the word “profit” included in the Plan was strongly resisted.
  2. I suggested that Private Forests Tasmania should stop trying to be the voice of the private forest industry. I suggested that forest industry stakeholders should instead find their own confident voices, and it is PFTs task to support stakeholders, not speak for them. This idea too was resisted.

PFT has a total of 10 staff and a small budget, and yet the Strategic Plan is an overwhelmingly broad, wordy, complicated document. Instead of trying to achieve significant progress on a few things, PFT will make little progress on a very broad front.

There is nothing in the Strategic Plan for blackwood growers.

It’s a broken business model!

The Strategic Plan will be finalised based on feedback from the workshop, incorporated into the PFT Corporate Plan, which then goes to the Mad Hatter/Minister for signing.

You can find the current Corporate Plan here:

Click to access Corporate_Plan_2021_-_2024.PDF

PS. Given that the current Strategic Growth Plan for the Tasmanian forest industry does not even mention Private Forests Tasmania, we can be sure that little progress will be made in the coming years.

https://www.stategrowth.tas.gov.au/energy_and_resources/forestry/strategic_growth_plan

2 Comments

Posted in Private Forests Tasmania

Taylor Guitars says goodbye!

Posted on February 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

Eleven years ago when I started this blackwood cooperative dream I hoped that the international tonewood market would play a significant role in the resurrection of the shrinking Tasmanian blackwood industry, and particularly the American tonewood market. In the mid-2000s CF Martin and Taylor Guitars, two of America’s biggest guitar makers, had both started using Tasmanian blackwood on a limited basis, with Taylor bringing it online in 2016 in their 300 series.

Blackwood: the sustainable tonewood

Unfortunately CF Martin’s strategy with blackwood failed in the marketplace, and Taylor Guitars have now taken a different road.

No doubt the international profile of Tasmanian blackwood as a premium tonewood has expanded enormously over the last 10 years, thanks largely to the support of Taylor Guitars.

https://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/acoustic/features/woods/body-woods/tasmanian-blackwood

https://blackwoodgrowers.com.au/category/taylor-guitars/

I had hoped that Taylor Guitars would play a more active role in Tasmania as they are doing in the Cameroon. For many years Taylor Guitars were singing blackwoods praises.

Alas no!

With Taylor Guitars taking on their Urban Wood initiative, and with Acacia melanoxylon being a common planted tree in California, Taylor Guitars are now sourcing their blackwood locally, as announced in the latest Wood & Steel vol. 102 magazine.

Ask Bob – All about acacia, supply chain issues, open-grain tops and string anchoring

Many Taylor guitars made with blackwood have featured blackwood from Australia, but we’ve mostly ceased using wood from there and have been using the same species planted here in California, which comes out of urban landscapes as those trees die or become a danger. Yes, even though we don’t market it like we do Urban Ash, many of our blackwood guitars are now from an urban landscape; in fact, most of them are now. Here, people call them black acacia, and they’re called Tasmanian blackwood or Australian blackwood when they come from Down Under.

I can understand why Taylor has chosen to pursue their Urban Wood initiative. It makes enormous sense from many business and environmental points of view.

https://fb.watch/bisYsyb-k8/

But it leaves Tasmania with yet another missed opportunity.

The forest industry in Tasmania is so conflicted, politicised and toxic it is virtually impossible to attract overseas investor interest. The risks here are just too great. Buyers come here to plunder not to plant!

So we must say goodbye to Taylor Guitars and thank them for their support over the last 18 years.

Leave a comment

Posted in Markets, Taylor Guitars, Tonewood

Facing the inevitable

Posted on December 18, 2021 | 4 comments

Back in 2013 I wrote this piece about Murray Kidman and his business Otway Tonewoods:

https://blackwoodgrowers.com.au/2013/07/13/murray-kidman/

Murray has been running a small business harvesting blackwood from public native forest in the Otway Ranges in south west Victoria, supplying the tonewood market.

As I said back then, Murray has been operating on borrowed time with the inevitable closure of public native welfare forestry in Victoria.

That time has now come.

But Murray and his son James are determined to fight to the last!

They have started a petition calling for the continuation of public native welfare forestry in Victoria:

https://www.otwaytonewoods.com.au/pages/petition

Murray’s two main customers, Maton and Cole Clark, are remaining silent about the situation. They understand the risks involved in wading into the deeply divisive Forestry Wars.

It is likely that most guitarists would favour saving our public native forests from logging vs saving the Kidman business.

How can you claim your business is sustainable when clearly the tonewood market is anything but sustainable?

The story of Otway Tonewoods is just another step on the long slow decline of the tonewood market in Australia. The music marketplace refuses to take any responsibility for its own future.

How many people in Australia own a guitar or other musical instrument made from wood? How many of these people make a living from their music?

How many music festivals are there in Australia?

How many music shops are there in Australia?

All of this will disappear unless someone starts growing tonewoods and is openly supported by the marketplace!

Sitting on our hands waiting for politicians or someone else to fix the problem just wont work.

Trying to prop up a failed industry (public native welfare forestry) wont work.

It is disappointing that neither Maton nor Cole Clark wont even start a conversation about the future supply of tonewoods. Crisis! What crisis??

They want us to believe that the future supply of tonewoods is completely under control. Is the shutting down of Otway Tonewoods part of their sustainable future?

When will the marketplace wake up?

It can’t whilst Maton and Cole Clark continue their current charades.

With all due respect to Murray and James Kidman, their social license is about to expire with no option for renewal.

Will it be a turning point for the music industry in Australia?

I sincerely hope so!!

4 Comments

Posted in Cole Clark Guitars, Cort Guitars, Maton Guitars

National Farm Forestry Strategy

Posted on December 8, 2021 | Leave a comment

https://haveyoursay.awe.gov.au/national-farm-forestry-strategy

Over the last 40 years there have been numerous strategies and reports written about farm forestry in Australia and the various issues and challenges it faces (someone needs to do a literature review). Many recommendations have been made and few if any recommendations have ever been implemented.

So here we are in 2021 and history is repeating itself once again.

The Federal Government wants to produce a National Farm Forestry Strategy.

The idea of Farm forestry was initiated in Australia in the mid-1960s. And here we are 50+ years later and pretty much nothing has happened.

Why has farm forestry failed in Australia?

Because politics and forestry welfare have always trumped profitable tree growing, ie. farm forestry. That was true 50 years ago and is still true today.

Reading the “Background” section on this Federal Government website just makes me cringe!! Is this some kind of prospectus? If so it is a 100% failure!

Is farm forestry about profitable tree growing? Apparently not!

All this glossy forest industry rhetoric will be familiar to some people, who will shake with fear as it rekindles memories of the Managed Investment Schemes (MIS), Australia’s biggest ever corporate swindle.

Farm forestry is still competing against Government sawmill welfare and a forest industry dominated by rentseekers and protectionist policies. Profitable tree growing is not on anyone’s agenda. Tree planter beware!!

My previous blog about functional wood markets is very relevant here.

Farm forestry will continue to struggle in Australia until we establish proper functioning wood markets, and that must be driven by the marketplace not politicians, bureaucrats and rentseekers.

We definitely need a National Farm Forestry Strategy but the focus must be on profitable tree growing, developing commercial credibility in the forest industry, and coordinating the support of the marketplace.

Species, locations, markets, prices, supply, demand, costs, etc..

It is not about providing subsided logs to local businesses!

Competitive transparent markets must be supported, including log export markets.

In New Zealand no one talks about farm forestry, because in NZ the Government plays no part in the forest industry. Farmers growing trees IS the forest industry in New Zealand.

Anyway the NFFS survey has 12 simple questions

The survey closes on 17 December 2021.

Good luck!

Leave a comment

Posted in National Farm Forestry Strategy

Creating a functional wood market in Australia

Posted on November 18, 2021 | 2 comments
Farm grown blackwood timber at Ceres Fair Wood, Melbourne. $10,000 per cubic metre. Ceres Fair Wood is one of the few businesses in Australia that cares about the future of quality wood.

The Past/Present

For thousands of years humans have been using wood for all sorts of reasons – to hunt, cook, stay warm, build shelter and wage war. And for all that time we have had natural forests to plunder. Whatever wood we could find we used, mostly with plenty of contempt and waste.

But the days of plundering natural forests are just about over.

One of the problems this history has created is dysfunctional wood markets.

Cheap plentiful wood from natural forests has meant no one has ever taken responsibility for the future. Cutting down and sawing up trees is simple. Getting trees planted and managed for the future is the real challenge.

There are thousands of businesses in Australia that rely on wood (harvesting, transport, milling, retail, manufacture, craft, music, art, etc.), and 99.99% of them take no interest or responsibility in the future supply of wood.

There is no relationship in the market between using and consuming wood and a tree being planted and managed.

Third party certification schemes such as Responsible Wood/PEFC and FSC are not building the forest industry and growing more wood for the future. Their goal is to save and better manage existing natural forests, not to grow more new wood resources.

The fact that the forest industry in Australia has never established any commercial credibility hasn’t helped the situation.

There must be a credible, transparent relationship between the price of wood and the cost of planting, growing and managing trees; and that relationship must encourage and support more tree planting to meet future demand.

My focus here is especially the premium solid wood market.

Until we build proper functioning wood markets in Australia most of these Australian businesses will disappear. Some will switch to imported wood when public native welfare forestry is shut down, but many will close. All for the want of a proper functioning wood market.

The Future

There are plenty of challenges that need to be addressed in order to build proper functioning wood markets but they are not insurmountable.

  1. Possibly the first and greatest challenge is market (and consumer) recognition and responsibility.

Proper functioning wood markets in Australia must be driven by the market and consumers.

Recent comments in the media by furniture makers and builders in Western Australia (in response to the shutting down of public native forestry) do not provide encouragement. Can you believe they would rather import timber from Indonesia than support local farm forestry?

How the thousands of wood-dependent businesses in Australia will come together to coordinate and plan their future is part of this challenge. Most of these businesses are too small to achieve much by themselves. The Australian Furniture Association could take on this role for furniture makers. Builders, cabinet makers and retailers could possibly join the AFA in this.

https://australianfurniture.org.au/

Is the AFA up to the challenge?

2. The second challenge is getting the farming community on board to plant, grow and manage the trees that the market wants.

I personally think this second challenge is by far the easier of the two.

Once farmers see the market change to being responsible and supportive they will quickly get on board.

There will need to be some serious talking and building trust, and careful management of risk.

Unlike the past where the market could pick and choose from a wide variety of natural forest woods, the market must now decide on which species it wishes to promote and support in farm forestry. Species must be fast growing and command sufficient market price to allow farmers to grow them commercially. Given we are talking 30+ years between investment/planting and harvest/revenue/profit, this will require careful consideration, coordination and planning.

The idea that farmers just randomly plant hundreds of different tree species in the hope of finding a buyer in the future just wont work. Farm forestry for the growing of high quality premium solid wood will require coordination and planning, driven by the market.

This is where organisations like the AFA must play a central role.

Final some discussion about markets.

Will there still be demand for premium quality solid wood in 30+ years time?

Certainly over my 40+ year career as a forester I have seen premium quality solid wood go from a being a common cheap product to a scarce expensive product, with all indications leading to its eventual disappearance from the Australian market entirely.

I think this is primarily a supply issue, rather than one of demand.

I see sufficient evidence that the market is prepared to pay very high prices for quality solid wood.

The problem is that in a dysfunctional wood market, these price/demand signals don’t trigger a supply response as they should. If we had a strong farm forestry culture in Australia and proper functioning wood markets, these price/demand signals would be making front page news. That is where we need to get too!

So dear reader, what do you think?

Comments and ideas welcome.

2 Comments

Posted in Commentary, Cooperatives, Furniture, Markets, Plantations, Prices, Tonewood