Peter Gunnersen

Gunnersen Timbermark

The changes which have taken place in the forest products industry over the past 40 or 50 years are a guide to what might happen over forthcoming years.

Around the middle of last century, our industry was typified by numerous native forest sawmills which supplied unseasoned timber to builders and timber merchants and a relatively few kiln driers who supplied timber merchants and the furniture and joinery industries, in the main.

Native hardwood was used for everything - house frames, fencing, strip flooring, mouldings, joinery, doors & windows, shelving etc.

There were of course, wholesalers in every state who mainly imported Douglas Fir from the USA and Canada, shorea species from S.E. Asia, NZ timbers, Baltic pine flooring and deals and hardwood from local mills.

The local pine industry was in its infancy with a few bush mills cutting green packaging materials on unsuitable equipment. However, the radiata pine plantation industry had begun.

Since those times we have witnessed the dramatic growth of the radiata industry with many thousands of hectares planted and harvested, the cutting, drying, milling, grading and value adding technologies developed such that most new house frames are now radiata and much popular furniture also.

The Radiata Pine Association of Australia was responsible for their rapid developments, including the metrication of dry dressed sizes.

Whilst timber merchants purchase bulk orders direct from sawmills, wholesalers sell a lot, especially furniture grade and imported product.

At the same time we have seen the rise of environmentalism and the consequent reservation of most native forest areas.

The number of hardwood sawmills has dropped enormously, in Victoria 256 hardwood sawmills in 1970 has become about 40 today, mostly value adding to a minimum of the kiln dried and dressed state, following international standard practice.

With the development of technology has come new products which depend upon sophisticated manufacturing techniques, highly developed adhesives and new distribution methods.

The first board product was decorative hardwood plywood made with interior adhesives. Veneers date back to Egyptian times.

The next was hardboard, which used hardwood feedstock and no adhesive, but the first “new technology” product was particle board, which uses mainly sawmill wastes for its raw material, and its derivatives, wet area board, melamine faced board and plastic tongue flooring.

Then, there was pine plywood for structural, utility and decorative uses using exterior adhesives.

Next came MDF, often used with veneered faces.

Fourthly, OSB which is not yet manufactured in Australia but which uses forest residues as its raw material.

Fifthly, LVL for structural purposes and finally glulam which has also been around for many years.

Domestic roof trusses is another growth product rising from nothing in the early 1960s to over 80 per cent market share today, nationally.

With the development of all these “home grown” products, Douglas fir or oregon as most people call it, has all but disappeared and timber merchants who once purchased oregon “flitch” to resaw to customer requirement now purchase finished products from either the producer or a wholesaler.

The other big change has been the growth of the plantation industry. Radiata Pine plantation grown for the sawmilling industry now covers 1.0m hectares of Australia.

Eucalyptus plantations, planted in the main for paper pulp, cover 675k hectares although the rate of planting of hardwood is now many times that of radiata, most of it under tax effective managed investment schemes.

Rationalisation is what has happened to our industry and rationalisation is what will continue.

Hundreds of hardwood sawmills in Australia will have rationalized into a few. Some were cutting as little as 1000 cubic meters per annum and some larger mills, were cutting more than 50,000 cubic meters per annum. Future hardwood sawmills will process in excess of 100,000 cubic meters of log per annum.

The need to achieve international best practice in the softwood industry has seen the growth of a few large mills cutting hundreds of thousands of cubic metres per year on automated and computerised equipment.

Improved communication, roads and motor transport has seen distribution rationalised, mill direct to merchant yard, or even to site at the expense of the railways and their infuriating marshalling yards.

Timber merchants too, have rationalised with many small family owned suburban or regional yards giving way to the larger merchant chains, especially the “super boxes”.

Rationalisation is bound to continue.

Not only will there become fewer and bigger native forest sawmills but there will commence automated sawmills based upon plantation eucalypts.

Softwood “factories” will become more product focused and more efficient, timber merchants will continue their divergence into trade oriented specialists or retail oriented “big box” chains.

Wholesalers and importers will maintain their unique position in the market. Whilst producers are able to deliver bulk orders directly into the market, they can only supply the products they produce.

Most timber product buyers require not only more than one product but those products in quite specific quantities, points of delivery, packing or even cut-to-size.

Many even want their inventories managed on their behalf, assistance with product promotion and special pricing and credit arrangements, for example, uniform national prices.

Industrial customers can have some unique requirements.

Only a modern wholesaler can provide this service and this trend is likely to continue, aided by computers and the internet for “online” trade and logistical advances.

Another development that will likely accelerate is the supply of components or products to replace mere material commodities.

More and more manufactured products, much of it sourced from cheap overseas countries (even though the raw material may be Australian) will be sold in Australia and most of this will be channelled through importers/wholesalers.

There has been and is still progressing, much research into plantation timber, processes, applications and the like by organisations like CSIRO and CRC for Wood Innovation with funding from FWPRDC.

At least some of this will be commercialised which may result in leaps in growth rates, economies of production, product quality and markets.

Timber will remain the most environmentally acceptable material available. It grows on water and sunlight, uses carbon dioxide and discharges oxygen and is everlastingly sustainable, even burgeoning.

Internationally recognised certification schemes with chain of custody documentation, will become a mandatory requirement to satisfy the public that timber products are sourced from sustainable forests which protect biodiversity and other non-commercial forest features.

There can be no better industry than ours!