Topic: Sustainable & Renewable

Investing for sustainability and a better carbon balance

Investing in a resource for the future will not only create sustainability, but it will also create confidence for others to invest in managed plantations. 

Plantations have a pivotal role to play in mitigating climate change. Growing trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store carbon. The carbon remains locked in the wood for the life of the product it becomes.

Farmers and forest growers have a vital role to play in the growing of trees.

But it is our processors that will create the marketable products that ensure growers see the value in keeping their trees in the ground long enough to become a solid wood product that will store carbon into the future.

Farmers and private forest growers need confidence in the future marketability of plantation-grown timber if they are going to be enticed to plant and manage trees as an investment. It is a crop that needs to be managed for 25-30 years before it will provide a return from solid timber.

Growers can harvest their tree crops earlier, at around 15 years, and sell the wood as fibre for paper, but the end product (paper) does not store carbon for as long as a solid timber product.

Investing in plantations is not without risk, and it requires upfront and ongoing investment to maintain. But if we are successful in finding processing solutions from this research there will be opportunities for growth into new high-value products for processors and markets for growers.

We understand that wood is The Ultimate Renewable and getting more trees in the ground is part of the solution to climate change.

Having a market for the end product is the key to that.

These high-value markets will prove to growers that it’s worth keeping their trees in the ground for longer knowing they will get a higher return.

Processing plantations will allow sawmillers to increase the supply of sustainably managed, certified timber into the marketplace.