NAFI |Facts & Figures

Woodchips

While some woodchips are used for landscaping gardens, most are produced during the initial processing of wood for the manufacture of pulp and paper and panel products.

To make pulp for paper production, wood must first be broken down into individual fibres. Chipping wood into very small pieces, about the size of a fifty cent coin, is the first stage in this process.

The wood for wood chips comes from a number of sources including:-

Native forests - from trees or parts of trees too defective to be economically processed as sawlogs, that are removed in the integrated sawlog-pulplog harvesting operations and from small trees thinned to promote the growth of bigger trees for sawlogs;

Plantation - either the thinnings of young trees removed to promote the growth of bigger trees for sawlogs (usually softwood plantation), or from the harvest of short rotation pulplog crops (hardwood plantations); and

Sawmill residues - from sawlog offcuts and waste (Resource Assessment Commission 1992 p. 37).

The logs used to make woodchips are called pulplogs because most woodchips are processed into pulp. The pulp is then used to make paper products.

Eucalypt woodchips provide pulp that gives the paper certain qualities, such as smoothness, opacity and ability to hold ink on the surface. These qualities are needed for fine writing and printing paper. Paper made mainly from pine is particularly suitable for uses such as newsprint, tissue and cardboard.

Woodchips from native forests are a product of integrated harvesting. The Resource Assessment Commission (1992, p. 37) noted that woodchips create an important market for the residual wood in many forests - "the trees that are unsuitable for sawlogs and that would be left standing in the forest, so leading to poor stand structure, or be cut and left to rot or burn".

In some regions, integrated harvesting has become the standard practice, particularly since the development of the export woodchip industry in 1970. It has provided the forest services with the opportunity to market wood that would otherwise be largely wasted (Resource Assessment Commission 1992, p. 302).

Integrated harvesting does not mean that every tree is harvested. Codes of Forest Practice ensure that within each harvested area, habitat trees, streamside buffers and wildlife corridors are retained to provide habitat for the forest fauna from which regenerated areas can be recolonised.

In 1999/00 24.0 million m³ of logs were harvested from Australian forests and plantations as follows.

Roundwood Removals from Australia's Forests and Plantations 1999-2000 ('000 m³)

Source	Products			Total
Source	Saw and veneer logs	Pulpwood	Other	Total
Native hardwood forest	3491	6972	232	10965
Hardwood plantations	149	684	6	839
Softwood plantations	7341	4656	478	12475
Total	10981	12312	716	24009

*Source: ABARE 2001, Australian Forest and Wood Products Statistics, Canberra, March and June quarters.

The processing of these logs produces around 8.5 million m³ of hardwood woodchips and 7.0 million m³ of softwood woodchips. About 10% of the hardwood woodchips are processed domestically, the remainder being exported. About 70% of the softwood woodchips are processed domestically (35 percent panelboards and 35% paper products), the balance being exported.

Woodchips are an important economic resource.

The Australian export woodchip industry is a sustainable regional income earner. Australia's income from woodchip exports was $745 million ($572 million hardwood and $173 million softwood) in 1999/00 (ABARE 2001). The volume of softwood woodchips is expected to continue to grow strongly in response to increased availability and market demand.

One green tonne of woodchips, is worth $65-75 a tonne on the world market. Compared to about $60 a tonne for coal and $30 a tonne for iron ore, woodchips are a valuable export product.

Australia could achieve greater economic benefits by processing woodchips that are currently being exported into pulp and paper products or panel products in Australia. Converting hardwood woodchips into bleached chemical pulp in Australia would increase the value of exports for a given quantity of fibre fourfold.

While woodchips are an important economic commodity for Australia, increasing the quantity of pulp and paper made in Australia would provide further benefits. With more pulp and paper mills adding value to woodchips, we could eventually become a net exporter of forest products and reduce the nation's trade deficit by at least $1.5 billion per annum. This would improve the living standards of all Australians.

References

ABARE 2001, Australian Forest and Wood Products Statistics, March and June quarters, Canberra.

Resource Assessment Commission 1992, Forest and Timber Inquiry Final Report, vol 1, AGPS, Canberra


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