A gathering of senior growers in February considered the establishment of a growers data series to provide more timely and detailed information on forestry activities. Annual information on a limited range of log products is currently provided to ABARES and published in the Forest and Wood Product Statistics.
The growers data series will complement the ABARES national statistics and provide the opportunity to use an on-line data portal to collect quarterly information.
Consistent with the other data series FWPA is hosting on behalf of the industry contributing companies will have access to all the data with higher level information provided to industry and the general public.
At this stage, 16 major forestry companies representing the native forests and the softwood and hardwood plantation estates have committed to participating.
The growers data series will operate at several levels, enabling individual companies to participate at the level at which they are comfortable. As well as generating data on log production volumes, there are also opportunities to aggregate weighted average price information and performance benchmarking data.
It is expected that the project will be launched for contributing companies in the next 3 months.
