Australia’s largest forest area—the ‘Green Triangle’—is shifting gears, strongly focusing on growing radiata pine for structural timber to meet the country’s multi-generational housing demand. It comes after Wood Central revealed—on Monday—that one of its largest forest managers, OneFortyOne, secured 15,000 hectares of predominantly hardwood blue gum plantations in Southern Australia, the largest acquisition by an Australian-owned manager in over a decade.
Speaking to ABC today, Professor Rod Keenan, a forest ecologist from the University of Melbourne, said that state and federal governments have incentives for industry and private investors to grow radiata pine: “We are seeing an increasing area of pine being established now, and that’s aimed at meeting that future need for timber for housing construction.”
According to Wendy Norris, OneFortyOne’s CEO—the forest manager with more than 95,000 hectares of plantations certified in Australia and New Zealand—the company plans to convert the vast majority of hardwood blue gums into softwood radiata pine over the next five years:
“The sawlog timber we’re growing from our radiata pine is really high quality, and the domestic market wants it,” Norris told ABC South East SA today. And whilst housing pressures (more specifically, the push to increase housing supply) is now driving public and private investment in pines, Norris said carbon credits also play a significant role in the push to plant more pines.
“Blue gum grows for about seven years, and when you convert to radiata pine, you grow your growing cycle to about 30 years. You store a lot more carbon in the tree when you grow it for that long, and you earn more carbon credits. That’s part of the economic decision when you convert from blue gum to long-term renewable pine plantations.”
Wendy Norris, OneFortyOne’s CEO, who spoke to ABC South East SA’s Sam Bradbrook on the drivers to replace hardwood blue gum plantations with softwood radiata pine.
Then, there is climate change and drying conditions, which make the shift from blue gums to radiata pine more attractive for forest managers: The blue gums are typically quite water-hungry and some of the sites they were planted on are probably not that suitable for blue gum these days and becoming less suitable as the climate becomes drier,” Professor Keenan said. “The radiata pine is more tolerant of those dry conditions, so by replacing blue gum with pine, we’re likely to see more resilient plantations to climate change.”
- To learn more about the OneFortyOne acquisition and why it has major implications for the future of Australian structural timbers, click here for Wood Central’s article on Monday. And to learn why Australian researchers are now looking to turn hardwood gums, once destined for wood chips into cross-laminated timber and other higher value products, click here for Wood Central’s special feature from February 2024.
