Woodchip exports from Western Australia have jumped significantly as blue gum plantation harvesting begins in earnest, providing more material now than native timber did at its peak.
Woodchip exports from Western Australia have jumped significantly as blue gum plantation harvesting begins in earnest, providing more material now than native timber did at its peak.
Figures extracted from the key ports of Bunbury and Albany by exporter WA Plantation Resources show woodchip exports for 2004-05 rose to almost 1.7 million tonnes, from 958,000 tonnes the previous year.
WA Business News obtained the figures from industry sources because official figures released by the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics had not shown woodchips volumes on a state-by-state basis due to confidentiality requirements of some exporters.
Sources valued the WA exports at more than $150 million.
ABARE figures showed Australia’s woodchip exports reached 5.6 million tonnes in 2004-05, worth $858.2 million.
Those figures show broadleaved timber woodchip exports were 4.5mt, worth $711.8 million, while the nation’s coniferous woodchip exports were 1.1mt, worth $146.4 million. WA did not export any significant quantities of the latter.
The last financial year’s tonnage is significantly more than the 983,000t exported in 2000-01, following which the then newly installed Labor government scaled native timber supplies, which had averaged about 750,000t a year.
Intervening years have been above 1mt only once as plantation production rose from around 250,000t and native timber supplies were scaled back.
Last year, though, less than 200,000t of native timber were exported, representing thinnings from karri forests that will in future produce only saw logs.
The figures also show the rising role of Albany as a woodchip export facility, exporting 459,000t last financial year, up from 223,000t.
WA Plantation Resources general manager woodchip operations, Ian Telfer, said Bunbury’s pre-eminence as the state’s woodchip export facility was likely to be usurped by Albany in the medium term.
“Given that is where the plantation resources are grown it will become the major exporter of woodchips,” Mr Telfer said.
Most of the woodchips exported from WA were destined for the paper industry in Japan, though South Korean-owned Hansol exported to its home country.
In 2000-01, Albany did not ship any woodchips, whereas this past year it represented almost a third of WA’s export volumes, as blue gum harvesting was stepped up and three new exporters joined Japanese-owned Albany Plantation Export Company Pty Ltd in using the Great Southern port.
New exporters from Albany are Great Southern Plantations Ltd, which is using the APEC facility, as well as Timbercorp and ITC, which have created a joint venture called Pulpwood Plantation Terminals Pty Ltd.
Apart from WA Plantation Resources, the other exporter from Bunbury is South Korean company Hansol.
Albany Port Authority CEO Brad Williamson said he expected woodchip volumes exported from the port to rise to between 2mt and 2.5mt within four years.
About two thirds of the woodchips arrived by rail, he said, and the port had received $2.6 million from the state government to fund the construction of a bridge that would allow it take longer trains.
However, the contentious issue in Albany remains the trucks, which drive through the town to reach the port.
“This is common in all ports when they expand,” Mr Williamson said.
A ring road is proposed to alleviate some of the traffic.
There is also the prospect of iron ore, which will be slurried in, which would increase activity at the port.
