Forest Products Industry

  Usually, a trifecta is a good thing, until you get three ducks (and a diamond duck) at the start of your first cricket season in a new club, in a new town, and an award is created in your honour. Thankfully, he’s scored more runs since, and his career as a John Deere technician has also taken off – bagging the 2025 John Deere Australian & New Zealand Construction & Forestry Service Technician of the Year Award. Source: Timberbiz Growing up in Richmond, in North West Queensland, Damian Aspinall lived a life many children would envy given his proximity to large machinery. His grandfather had a small earthmoving business and when his father bought a grader when he was 12, the passion for machinery and mechanics was ignited. He later started an apprenticeship with the local council, where he was first exposed to John Deere equipment after a 770G grader was added to the fleet. After relocating to Roma two-and-a-half years ago and securing a role with RDO Equipment, Mr Aspinall said he was excited to learn new skills on the range of John Deere construction equipment. He also paid tribute to the strength and camaraderie of his friends and colleagues in Roma. “I’m over the moon,” he said. “This award is a big thanks to all the team back in Roma. Without them I wouldn’t be here. Everyone in the team relies on everyone and we all learn from each other.” When asked about his career aspirations, mentoring the dealership’s apprentices was at the top of his list. “I just want to continue doing what I am doing and helping the apprentices come along and for them to reach their best potential,” he said. “We’ve got three apprentices back at Roma. They’re all good young fellows and it would be a great feeling to sign them all off.” John Deere Technician of the Year awards 2025: Australian Agriculture & Turf Service Technician of the Year Daniel Popovici, AFGRI Equipment, Albany, Western Australia New Zealand Agriculture & Turf Service Technician of the Year Bryce Dickson, Brandt, Whangārei, New Zealand Australian & New Zealand Parts Technician of the Year Poppy Blohm, AFGRI Equipment, Narrogin, Western Australia Australian & New Zealand Construction & Forestry Service Technician of the Year Damian Aspinall, RDO Equipment, Roma, Queensland Australian & New Zealand Service Apprentice of the Year Henry Barkley, Haeusler’s, Mildura, Victoria Australian & New Zealand Parts Apprentice of the Year Olivia Barsley, Hutcheon & Pearce, Cowra, New South Wales

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The Victorian government is pushing ahead with plans to convert about 65,000ha of state forests into national parks in Victoria’s central west, with new legislation introduced to parliament last week. Source: Weekly Times The move will see existing state park areas rebadged as national parks in state forests including Mount Buangor, Pyrenees and Wombat-Lerderderg. Areas in Cobaw, Hepburn and Bendigo regional parks will become conservation parks along with the Mirboo North Immediate Protection Area. Environment Minister Steve Dimopoulos said the government was “protecting what Victorians love most about our great outdoors, so that they can continue to experience and enjoy nature and attract more visitors to the regions”. “The new parks provide safe homes for our famous wildlife and boost local regional economies by keeping Victoria at the top of every visitor’s bucket list,” Mr Dimopoulos said. The parks would continue to be accessible for such activities as bushwalking, camping, horse riding, four-wheel driving, dog walking, fishing and seasonal deer hunting, he said. But Eastern Victoria Nationals MP Melina Bath said the move did not reflect what the community wanted. “This will lock up significant areas of state forests in the Wombat Pyrenees area, but the Labor government has an extremely bad track record on diversity and conservation,” Ms Bath said. The legislation comes after the government promised not to rebadge areas in the Yarra Ranges, Kinglake, Lake Eildon, and Baw Baw national parks, as well as the Bunyip, Cathedral Ranges, and Moondarra state parks. It was recommended that 75% of the region’s 389,725ha of state forest be converted into “a large protected area such as a national park” that would include areas previously used for native timber harvesting.

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The Australian Forest Products Association has welcomed the Federal Government’s acknowledgement that its decision to pursue a 62-70% below 2005 level emission reduction target by 2035 cannot be achieved without the contribution of the forestry sector’s entire supply chain. Source: Timberbiz “We acknowledge the Government’s sector plans announced alongside the new 2035 target, especially the Agriculture and Land Sector Plan and Built Environment Sector Plan, which point to enormous opportunities for forestry to be an essential part of the decarbonisation solution,” Chief Executive Officer of AFPA, Diana Hallam said. “We will engage with the Commonwealth to ensure forestry, and its supply chain can help meet the Government’s targets, with the biggest possible.” Ms Hallam said that by using timber in new homes and buildings to displace carbon intensive construction materials, wood-fibre based packaging instead of plastics, paper and tissue products, power poles and even garden and mulch products alongside production trees absorbing carbon as they grow, the forestry sector would help Australia’s national economy decarbonise while providing essential employment and economic contributions for the nation. “We will work specifically with the Albanese Government on existing initiatives like the Support Plantation Establishment Program (SPEP), the continued and necessary contribution from sustainable native forestry and how industry and the government can partner through the processing and manufacturing cogs of our supply chain, as the country works towards net zero,” Ms Hallam said. “Australia’s former Chief Scientist, Professor Ian Chubb said it best on the release of the Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) review, stating, ‘the only pathway known to science that has immediate capacity to remove greenhouse gases, particularly CO2 from the atmosphere is photosynthesis’. Australia’s sustainable forestry sector grows, processes and manufactures trees into a range of essential products locking up carbon at scale.”

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Tasmania’s Premier Jeremy Rockliff plans to push ahead with plans to build the Macquarie Point stadium despite the Tasmanian Planning Commission recommending against it, by taking it to a vote in State Parliament. Source: Timberbiz Mr Rockliff said the Commission report massively underestimated the social and economic benefits of the stadium, the Tassie Devils AFL and AFLW teams, and a supercharged events industry would have on Tasmania. “Stadiums are complex, and this is the reason why across the nation special laws are used to approve them, instead of the traditional planning scheme,” he said. “The Commission has done its job, and I thank them. A panel, set up by the Tasmanian Planning Commission, this week recommended parliament reject the $1bn-plus project, which would have featured the largest timber roofed stadium in the world concluding: “The benefits are outweighed by the disbenefits …The Panel recommends that the Project should not proceed”. Mr Rockliff said that at the beginning of the process, it was known that elected members of Parliament would have the final vote on the project. “It is now time for MPs to have their say,” he said. Both the Liberals and Labor support the stadium, meaning it should pass the lower house. However, it faces a trickier path through the independent-dominated upper house, which the two major parties don’t control. Multiple independents are anti-stadium, and several are on the fence. The fixed dome-shaped roof was an important part of the design and is a condition of Tasmania’s licence for AFL and AFLW entry in 2028.

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Spring has sprung and with it a much-welcomed improvement in demeanour for most people. While winter will be missed about as much as Benjamin Doyle, we are all well aware of the fierce rain events and subsequent carnage that spring can deliver so we are not out of the ‘woods’ yet. There’re generally a few key changes in the forest industry that come into play during spring. Firstly, the Chinese log demand starts increasing as the hot season dissipates and workers start to return to construction projects and, secondly, New Zealand supply also increases relatively quickly as things dry out and prices improve both in domestic and export markets. This historically plays out with reasonable export price increases towards the back end of spring that carry through summer until a supply/demand imbalance sees prices drop around Chinese New Year holidays. What, if anything’s different this year? Production. Annual exports to China from NZ totalled a shade over 20 million m3 each year between 2022 and 2024 following a peak of 23 million in 2021. If you plot out NZ’s current run rate, we will be looking at total NZ log exports of around 16.8 million in 2025 of which only 15 million will be China bound (1.1M to Korea, 400K to India and 300K to Japan). The last time we exported volumes as low as 15 million m3 to China was in 2013. Where has that production gone one would ask? You only have to scan ‘logging equipment’ on Trademe or drive past a machinery sales yard to see that a significant number of harvesting contractors are no longer in business. Successive years of tough trading and increased pressure from councils, making it almost impossible to practically harvest in some regions, have forced many to the wall with others only just hanging in there by the grace of their finance companies and the IRD. Having said that, when prices increase above the NZ$125/m3 level and the sun shines, we generally see an increase in harvest activity and it’s surprising where volume can come from. However, with around eight weeks from stump to China, the reaction to increased deliveries is slow to be felt in the market. Back to the ‘what’s different this year’ question is the higher than usual winter export prices. Generally, winter prices are well below what we have experienced this year, which results in a reasonable amount of harvesting gear parked up waiting for better times. Although winter prices weren’t great this year, they were at a level that allowed much of that machinery that would usually be idle to tick over, albeit slowly. This all adds up to the inability/unlikelihood of NZ reacting at previous levels to the traditional stimuli which gives rise to the distinct potential of a reasonable undersupply going forward should China come out of the blocks with increased demand. Current in-market inventory levels are still reducing and sit around the 2.7 million m3 mark, down 150k from August which doesn’t give a very large buffer if demand spikes even marginally. September export prices are largely flat with lower foreign exchange offsetting increased shipping costs and slightly lower CFR sales prices. Many were expecting increased CFR and at wharf gate prices for September, however a slight wrinkle emerged in the form of an inventory issue in China which has put the jitters around traders. This wrinkle involves a discrepancy between the actual inventory on the port and the volume recorded on the balance sheet of a large LC (letter of credit) company. There are a number of theories around how this has eventuated but suffice to say it’s a big enough problem that many LC companies have tightened their criteria and some have stopped issuing LC’s until it is resolved. It’s not the first time this kind of jiggery pokery has occurred and it’s likely the wrinkle will get unwrinkled, and the market will return to normal trading conditions (whatever they are). As wrinkles go, there’s a potentially larger one brewing in the form of Trumps tariffs. NZ timber exports to the USA are currently exempt from tariffs but there is widespread belief that the Don will announce a tariff on NZ timber products in early to mid-October. This will specifically affect those sawmills that saw pruned logs with the US market being the largest for clear lumber exported from NZ, currently worth NZ$400M annually. Trade Minister, Todd McLay has recently been in Washington spreading the good word with US trade representatives (although Leo Malloy may have more appealed to Trumps negotiating persona) and it is hoped they will see the importance of NZ timber to their construction industry. If a tariff is imposed, it is unknown what level it will be set but it will likely be the single most significant decision that will affect the NZ sawmilling industry, ever. The decision to close the Eves Valley Sawmill in Nelson came as a huge surprise to most and, although it is part of a consolidation strategy into the Carter Holt Harvey Kawerau site, it is cold comfort to those that have lost their jobs. The announcement is a double blow for those forest owners that have been affected by the recent windthrow event in the region, and it is hoped that the mill will continue to operate for a period to assist with the salvage. So, a few dark clouds for us wood folk this month but we’re a resilient bunch and used to getting punched on the nose. We’re getting good at adapting to change, whether it’s regulatory, weather or market related and tend to come out firing on all 8 cylinders once the dust settles. Let’s just hope the tariffs aren’t an uppercut. Marcus Musson, Forest360 Director.  

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