Where does new timber come from today?

Timber

26 Nov

Timber is not only beautiful and useful, it’s in high demand! In 2017-2018, Australia exported or sold domestically over 4,000 kilotons of hardwood and softwood, in addition to an even larger amount of produced paper and wood panels products, and more recent sources say that production has only increased!

It’s not a surprise, but we can sometimes forget when dealing with timber and related products that every single fibre of wood originally came from a tree, and that these trees had to grow somewhere and were part of an ecosystem. No matter where wood is grown, and how sustainably it is done so, there is always an impact on removing grown trees from an environment, as well as the potential impact of non-endemic species growing there in the first place. However, when you walk into a hardware store or even a timber yard, there is little to link the product in front of you to the living thing that once grew someplace, and the journey it took to get there.

Historically, all timber was cut from existing forests that had grown without large-scale historic interruption, in some cases with trees that had found themselves undisturbed for centuries. However, as timber demand increased, and timber sources close to population centers were entirely milled as towns and cities grew and timber need increased, alternative solutions were needed. These solutions have differed in small part from place to place around the world, so this article will be looking mainly at sawn timber in Australia (as opposed to wood products like structural laminated timbers), and breaking down timber into a few key categories.

Plantation forests

Commercial plantation forests are any forests seeded and grown with the specific purpose of commercial wood production. As of 2019, approximately 1.5% of Australia’s total forest area comprised of commercial plantations, with the largest plantation areas in Victoria, Western Australia, New South Wales and Tasmania (with 0.42 million, 0.38 million hectares, 0.38 million hectares and 0.31 million hectares respectively).

Softwood plantations

The first softwood plantations were trialed in Australia in the 1860s, and quickly a number of species were found to be both quick to grow and effective as general purpose timber. As of 2023, Australia had around a million hectares of established softwood plantations, which grew the bulk of domestically used softwood timber. As of 2019, softwoods made up 52% of the total commercial plantation area in Australia,

Softwoods grown in Australia include hoop pine, celery top pine, slash pine, and white cypress, though predominantly plantations comprise radiata pine (Pinus radiata).

Hardwood plantations

Australia has just under a million hectares of hardwood plantations, mostly consisting of blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus, at almost two thirds of hardwood plantation species in 2008), but also shining gum (E. nitens), blackbutt (E. pilularis), flooded or rose gum (E. grandis), mountain ash (E. regnans), Gympie messmate (E. cloeziana) and Dunns white gum (E. dunnii). It’s important to note that the majority of hardwood plantation timber is used to produce pulpwood for paper creation. There are a small but growing percentage of hardwood plantations that are managed for growing sawlogs, however the majority of hardwood for sawn timber products is not coming from commercial plantations.

Native forests

While there are a large number of commercial plantations in Australia, we still source a large amount of timber from native forests. Our native forests are the biggest category of forests in the country, covering over 130 million hectares in 2023, the majority of which are eucalypt forest. Of this, close to 30 million hectares is available and suitable for commercial wood production, according to the Department of Agriculture in 2015-16.

According to the ANU in 2022, each year around 2% of Australia’s native forests are still logged. While forestry and governmental bodies have long talked about the value of this timber for our economy, job creation, and more, it also has resulted in Australia being the only ‘developed’ nation that is on the deforestation hotspot list.

While there hasn’t been much political incentive to change native forest logging from the federal government, there have been some positive moves from state governments to end native logging in our lifetimes, such as the Victorian government’s plan to close the native timber industry at the end of last year. The amount of timber coming out of native forests is dropping every year across the country, but it still isn’t small enough that you can be certain that a timber product wasn’t produced from native forests.

It is also worth noting that the impacts of climate change also directly impact forests and available timber supplies – in NSW alone, the 2019-2020 fires burned through both native forest and plantations across the state.

But where is this piece of timber actually from?

This blog posed a question that can actually be very hard to answer – does the piece of timber in front of you come from a commerical plantation or from native forests? In NSW, where Among The Trees is based, has seen an increase in hardwood and softwood plantations and a reduction in native hardwood forest logging, however native forest logging still occurs, as well as the import of native forest timber from other parts of the country.

The first thing you can do is ask – does the company you’re buying from know where the timber was sourced, and can they trace the history of the log. The second thing is to do your own research – what does a company’s website tell you, or the websites and documentation of their suppliers or industry bodies. Linked at the bottom of this blog are some articles and PDFs that are a great starting place. The final thing is to trust your common sense – if you’re looking at high quality hardwood with tight and even grain, there’s a good chance it wasn’t grown in a commercial plantation.

However, there is another option, which is to use timber that has already had the time taken for it to be grown, logged, milled and used, and is ready to be used again. Reclaimed timber gives you the quality of beautiful native timber without the cost of continued native forest logging, and helps that timber avoid landfill in the process. We obviously have a range of reclaimed timber in store, but we encourage you to find reclaimed timber sources wherever you are, and from a range of suppliers.