Australia's Forest Industries

Economic and social contribution

Forest industries contribute significantly to the economic and social well-being of rural and regional Australia. These industries occur across a range of sectors including forest growing and management, timber harvesting and haulage, timber sawmilling, processing and manufacturing, pulp and paper manufacturing and timber merchandising.

Forest industries are Australia's second largest manufacturing industry with an annual turnover of $23 billion. The industry contributes around 0.7 per cent to Australia's Gross Domestic Product and 5.8 per cent of manufacturing output.

Approximately 76,800 people are directly employed in Australia’s forest and wood products industry, including 13,200 people in the forestry and logging sectors and 63,600 people in the wood manufacturing sectors.

Wood production and consumption

In 2008-09, 25 million cubic metres of logs were harvested from Australia’s production forests for a gross value of around $1.7 billion. Around two-thirds of this log harvest was from plantations with the remainder from native forests. Australia’s total log harvest has increased by 21 per cent over the past ten years. Over the same period the harvest of hardwood logs from plantations increased nearly 7 fold, while there was a 17 per cent decrease in logs harvested from native forests.

During 2008-09, Australia’s log harvest produced:

• 4.7 million cubic metres of sawnwood
• 1.6 million cubic metres of wood based panels; and
• 3.3 million tonnes of paper and paperboard. 

Trade

Australia has traditionally carried a deficit in the trade of its forest and wood products. While total exports of wood products in 2008–09 were $2.3 billion, imports were $4.4 billion, representing a trade deficit of $2.1 billion (see table below). Most of this deficit is in paper products as they account for around half ($2.2 billion) of Australia’s wood product  imports in 2008–09.

Sawnwood is also a significant import valued at $405 million in 2008–09. Just under half of all imported sawnwood comes from New Zealand mostly in the form of softwood timber. Significant wood product imports also come from countries such as China, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The main export from Australia is wood chips with 5.2 million tonnes exported during 2008–09 with a value of nearly $1 billion. This represents 43 per cent of Australia’s wood product exports. Of Australia’s total woodchip exports in 2008-09, 82 per cent was to Japan.

All of the above information and greater detail can be found in ABARE’s Australian Forest and Wood Products Statistics.

Outlook

Australia is well placed to take advantage of the long term expansion of wood and fibre markets in the Asia-Pacific region. Australia's domestic market also provides a solid investment platform for strategies to replace imports and develop export opportunities.

The high quality of Australia’s production forest resource and world-competiveness of supporting infrastructure, such as transport and manufacturing, make Australia’s forest sector an attractive investment opportunity.

As such, there is a range of future investment planned in Australia’s forest industries including investment in hardwood and softwood sawmills, pulp and paper mills, wood product export facilities and engineered wood product mills.