For the year ended May 2015, the value of Australia’s wood resources and wood products exports rose 16.4% compared with the prior year, and were valued at AUD1.420 Billion. Although there were other pockets of growth, the simple reality is that Australia’s exports of wood and wood products is utterly dominated by the resources end of the value chain. Significant growth in woodchip exports and stability in softwood roundwood exports continue to account for nearly all of the exports.
Starting with the least transformed product, roundwood, Australia’s total exports were valued at AUD301.8M for the year ended May 2015, up 4.2% on the prior corresponding period. As the chart below shows, the value of exports has been very stable over the last year, having lifted through the second half of 2013 as the Australian Dollar depreciated.
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The large spike in exports in March 2014 has washed through the year-end data, but such has been the strength of exports over the year, the data barely noticed its absence. A clear month on month growth trend is also evident. In May 2015, exports valued at AUD30.8M were 5.5% higher than for May 2014.
This is by no means conclusive proof, but the strength of roundwood exports must in part reduce the supply of logs available for domestic processing. This in turn may be one of the drivers of the apparent weakening of sawn softwood sales reported earlier in Statistics Count. As the chart below shows, roundwood exports are entirely dominated by softwood logs.
To place roundwood exports further into the softwood context in Australia, for the year ended May 2015, softwood logs accounted for 88.3% of total roundwood exports, valued at AUD266.4M.
While it is true that the bulk of the log exports are of thinnings and smaller sized material, that is not universally the case. Additionally, all of the exports are recorded as sawlogs and veneer logs. It is clear that at least some of the wood ends up as chip, in either wood panels or paper. However, the bulk is sawn or peeled, an activity that under the right parameters could be conducted in Australia.
Turning to Australia’s exports of woodchips, we find the situation reversed, with strong growth in the total value of exports driven entirely by the booming plantation hardwood harvest. As the chart below displays, for the year ended May 2015, exports of woodchips were valued at AUD933.3M, up 24.4% for the year ended May 2014.
For further details, go to the FWPA Data Dashboard.
Dominance of hardwood chip exports continues and will do so into the foreseeable future. For the year ended May 2015, hardwood chips accounted for 88.6% of the total.
