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Metsä is investing in a new production line for Muoto food packaging in Äänekoski, Finland. As for Metsä’s other innovation projects, the development of the lignin product and carbon capture is continuing as planned, but the conditions for the Kuura textile fibre project are estimated to have changed significantly due to the global market situation. Source: Timberbiz Investment in Metsa’s Kuura textile fibre mill will not proceed. In the target market for Kuura textile fibres – that is, man-made cellulosic fibres – significant global overproduction has emerged in a short period, which has undermined the competitiveness of high-quality and responsibly manufactured fibres. The greatest change has taken place in Asia, where significant new capacity has emerged in recent years. Currently, too few customers are willing to pay a premium for responsibly produced materials. Due to the market changes, the investment in the Kuura textile fibre mill in Kemi, Finland, will not proceed. The Kuura project is not estimated to have the prerequisites to continue in its current form. However, the expertise developed in the field of textile fibres is valuable, and the company is exploring options for utilising it. Developed by Metsä, Muoto is a fibre-based packaging solution produced from Metsä’s own wood fibres. The products can be shaped to meet a variety of customer needs. “We’ve developed a competitive product and production concept for Muoto packaging that responds to the growing demand for fossil-free packaging solutions. Muoto supports Metsä’s ambition to develop new packaging innovations in collaboration with companies in the packaging value chain,” said Niklas von Weymarn, CEO of the innovation company Metsä Spring. Muoto products are made directly from wet wood pulp, without any intermediate steps. Muoto combines stiffness and functionality with a light weight, making it suitable for applications such as demanding serving and food packaging. “There’s a strong market trend to find alternatives to plastic in certain product groups, which opens a significant market niche for the Muoto business. Muoto products also meet the strict requirements of the EU’s recent Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation. Legislation is expected to give a boost to the product’s chances of success,” von Weymarn said. The new Muoto fibre packaging production line will be located within the Metsä mill site in Äänekoski, next to the existing Muoto demo plant, and it will start up in 2028. The investment will be made in Äänekoski instead of Rauma, as previously planned, based on the infrastructure of the mill site, the existing production line and the costs of the investment. The value of the investment is approximately EUR 25 million, and the nominal capacity of the production line will be more than 100 million products per year.  

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Wood is widely regarded as the building material of the future. But turning renewable raw materials into high-rises that can genuinely bear structural loads takes more than good timber. It takes adhesives that deliver on what architecture promises. Source: Timberbiz In the Medienhafen district of Düsseldorf, Germany there is a building that speaks a different language: The Cradle is an office building with a striking façade of timber diamond shapes, where wood is not just decoration but structure. Framework. And right at its heart, invisible yet indispensable: adhesive – “the unsung hero,” as Marcel Blodau calls it. Mr Blodau works in product development at Henkel Adhesive Technologies, focusing on Engineered Wood, structural timber construction. “We’re not talking about chairs or tables. We’re talking about structures that carry loads: walls, ceilings, high-rises,” he said, explaining why the right adhesive is so critical: in cross laminated timber (CLT), layers of wood are stacked at 90-degree angles and bonded with adhesive. Cross-bonded layers compensate for the natural weak points of timber and achieve strengths comparable to concrete and steel. “That is only possible through the combination of adhesive and wood,“ Mr Blodau said. Mr Blodau has been part of the team since 2020. While the market has long been dominated by melamine-urea-formaldehyde (MUF) adhesives, Henkel focuses on polyurethane, a technology that contains no water and no solvents and can be processed at room temperature. “Polyurethane in structural timber construction is a comparatively young technology. We are at the beginning of a shift from concrete to more sustainable wood as building material – and that is exactly what makes it so exciting,” Mr Blodau said. What sets timber construction apart from steel and concrete is not just the material itself. It is the way buildings can be constructed. Timber components are manufactured in climate-controlled facilities, year-round, regardless of weather. When concrete cannot cure in winter, a conventional construction site comes to a standstill. In mass timber construction, production continues. “A finished wall element arrives on site and just needs the door fitted,” Mr Blodau said. That means shorter, more reliable build times and fewer trucks on the road. Claudia Meckel, who leads global product development for structural timber construction at Henkel, sees a further advantage. “Construction teams can prefabricate in a heated factory instead of standing on a building site in freezing temperatures. That is better for the workforce, for build quality and for planning reliability alike,” she said. There is a personal dimension to it as well: the prepolymer on which Henkel’s timber adhesives are based – the chemical building block that gives the adhesive its bonding properties was developed by her father, a chemist who spent many years in fundamental research. “It is wonderful to see what has come out of so much research and development work,” she said. Henkel’s ambition does not stop at the laboratory. The assembly time/press time ratio – the relationship between how long an adhesive remains workable and how long it needs under pressure to cure – shows how far product development reaches: directly into customers’ production processes. “If the adhesive has a long open time but a short press time, that increases the output of the entire production line,” Ms Meckel said. There is one question that comes to mind immediately: Don’t timber buildings burn far more quickly? Ms Meckel shakes her head. Steel softens under extreme heat and loses its structural integrity. Timber, by contrast, chars on the outside, forming a protective layer while retaining its load-bearing capacity in the core for a long time. For tall buildings, adhesives are needed that actively support this behaviour. In a fire, an adhesive must not melt. If it does, the char layer falls away, fresh wood is exposed and the fire gains strength again. “Using phosphorus compounds, the adhesive forms a stable char layer,” Ms Meckel said. “This allows timber structures to remain stable, enables safe evacuation and is a key enabler for high rise timber construction.” Henkel’s position as a pioneer in this field is clear from the fact that its internal research division began working on the topic as early as 2017 and long before EUROCODE 5: The European standard that for the first time sets binding fire protection requirements for adhesives in structural timber construction. “The goal was clear: develop adhesives that make it possible to build tall buildings from wood,” Mr Blodau said. Henkel is the only supplier worldwide offering a fire-retardant polyurethane adhesive, LOCTITE HB X, that meets both European and American certification standards. Building on this success, Henkel introduced the new fire-retardant LOCTITE HB XE product line in 2025. The new generation adhesive delivers outstanding performance in meeting the latest EUROCODE 5 requirements while also offering enhanced processing and application properties for customers. Sustainability in timber construction operates on several levels: CO₂, recycling, health, certification. The visible dimension: Wood stores CO₂ and replaces energy-intensive concrete. The less obvious one: the bonding agents themselves. But Henkel goes a step further. The answer is mass balance – a certified accounting method that tracks the share of sustainable raw materials through the production chain and it starts with used cooking oil. Used cooking oil is processed into bio-naphtha, which is fed together with conventional naphtha, into the start of the chemical production chain. Through a certified mass-balance accounting system, the improved CO₂ footprint can be documented and passed along the entire supply chain as a certificate. The result: the LOCTITE HB S ECO line – the first polyurethane adhesive for structural timber construction certified under ISCC Plus, an internationally recognized sustainability standard. “With this, we can reduce the CO₂ footprint per kilogram of adhesive by up to 60 per cent,” Ms Meckel said. Mr Blodau said that Henkel is currently the only supplier in the polyurethane space with this certification. Jeanine Wojciechowski has been responsible for Henkel’s European business in structural timber construction since September 2025. And is still captivated by what she sees every day. “Every time I walk into the production facility, […]

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Prescribed burning is the only landscape scale tool capable of reducing fuel loads, simplifying fuel structure, breaking fuel continuity and moderating dangerous fire behaviour across Australian forests. Source:  John O’Donnell As noted in the attached review, prescribed burning is the only landscape scale tool capable of reducing fuel loads, simplifying fuel structure, breaking fuel continuity and moderating dangerous fire behaviour across Australian forests. Decades of scientific and operational evidence, from McArthur (1962) to Burrows et al. (2023), demonstrate that fuel quantity, fuel structure and fuel continuity are the dominant drivers of fire intensity, severity, rate of spread and spotting. Weather and topography matter, but only fuel can be modified at scale. The impacts of intense, severe and long duration bushfires across south eastern Australia are enormous, spanning 32 impact areas and affecting communities, ecosystems, water supplies, infrastructure and national resilience. The combined impacts across SE Australia are huge, especially considering intense and severe bushfires. With severe fires becoming more frequent, fuel management has become a critical national priority. The full review is attached here. Fuel layers, understanding how fires actually spread A central insight of the review is that prescribed burning directly modifies the fuel layers that govern fire behaviour. Cheney’s (2026 a per. comm) fuel layer framework shows that dry eucalypt forests contain six distinct layers, including canopy, intermediate, elevated, near surface, surface and duff, each contributing differently to flame development, vertical progression and spotting.  Cheney observes that “the structure of the vegetation in a dry eucalypt forest can be identified in 6 layers of different density” and that the near surface layer “is the first to dry after rain and always burns.” This layered understanding clarifies why prescribed burning is uniquely effective: it reduces the fine fuels that dominate rate of spread, removes ladder fuels that enable crown fire and chars bark fuels that drive spotting. Relative Fire Hazard and risk Relative Fire Hazard (RFH) analysis highlights the enormous differences in hazard between fuel types. Cheney (2026 b pers comm) shows that under very high fire danger, “a fire in a wet forest is 3000 times more hazardous than an eaten out or fine one year old pasture.” These hazard ratios incorporate both intensity and burnout time, the latter being crucial because long combustion periods drive soil heating, tree mortality and deep duff ignition. RFH demonstrates that fuel structure, fuel mass and combustion duration, not weather alone, govern the destructive potential of bushfires. Fuel load reduction, the cornerstone of bushfire mitigation Fuel load reduction is a major benefit of prescribed burning. Fine fuels accumulate rapidly after fire, and without regular mild burning they reach levels that support high intensity, fast moving and uncontrollable bushfires. Prescribed burning reduces surface litter, near surface fuels, elevated fine fuels, bark fuels, understorey shrubs, and parts of the duff and coarse woody debris layers. Western Australia’s long-term data demonstrates this clearly: maintaining prescribed burning at ~8–9% of public land annually keeps roughly 40% of the landscape in 0–5 year fuels, resulting in low bushfire area and high suppression effectiveness. Fuel structure simplification Fuel structure, the vertical and horizontal arrangement of combustible material, is as important as fuel load. Long fire free intervals produce dense understorey, low canopy base height, heavy bark fuels and continuous vertical ladders, conditions highly conducive to crown fire initiation. Fuel arrangement can have a greater impact on fire behaviour than overall fuel quantity. Prescribed burning simplifies fuel structure by reducing understorey density, removing juvenile eucalypts and shrubs, reducing dead woody debris, increasing vertical separation between fuel layers and charring fibrous bark, reducing spotting for several years These structural changes directly reduce flame contact with elevated fuels and limit crown fire potential. Breaking fuel continuity creating landscape mosaics Horizontal fuel discontinuity slows fire spread, reduces flame contact with elevated fuels and limits spotting. Landscape mosaics created by regular prescribed burning provide natural containment lines, reduce the probability of large fires, and support biodiversity by maintaining varied successional stages and unburnt refuges. Prescribed burning creates landscape mosaics and reduces fuel continuity. Reducing woody thickening and dead timber fuels Prescribed burning reduces woody thickening, a widespread issue in long unburnt forests. Thickened understorey increases fuel mass, reduces visibility, lowers canopy base height and increases ladder fuel density. It also reduces dead timber fuels generated by intense bushfires and by eucalypt decline associated with long term fire exclusion. Prescribed burning reduces quantities of dead timber fuels from intense bushfires and from decline processes driven by lack of regular, mild fire. These dead fuels significantly increase fire intensity, smouldering duration and suppression difficulty. Fire behaviour moderation and safety benefits In conclusion, prescribed burning moderates fire behaviour across all key dimensions, including intensity, severity, duration and rate of spread. By reducing fine fuels, simplifying structure and breaking continuity, prescribed burning lowers flame height, reduces ember production, limits crown fire potential and improves firefighter safety. Prescribed burning remains the only practical, scalable mechanism for reducing fuels, moderating fire behaviour, improving suppression effectiveness and reducing the likelihood of megafires.

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Forty-three Forest Fire Management Victoria (FFMVic) firefighters have deployed to the United States to support crews battling major wildfires, bringing specialist skills developed fighting fires in some of Victoria’s most rugged and remote forests. Source: Timberbiz The contingent is made up of highly trained and experienced firefighters from across the state, equipped to directly attack and contain fires in challenging conditions. “The situation across much of North America remains serious, and our crews are ready to put their skills and experience to work alongside local firefighters,” FFMVic Chief Fire Officer Chris Hardman said. Firefighters across the United States are currently working to contain 94 large fires. This is the third international deployment of firefighters and incident management staff from Victoria since July. “Our arduous firefighters are among our most experienced and physically capable personnel. They will make a big difference,” Mr Hardman said. “They bring resilience, practical skills and a deep understanding of fire behaviour developed through years of responding to some of Victoria’s most devastating bushfires.”

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  New Zealand’s Gisborne council is commissioning an independent assurance review of its forestry consenting and compliance system. Source: Timberbiz The Hon Christopher Finlayson KC has been confirmed to chair the independent review panel, with environmental and resource management specialist Dr Marie Doole confirmed as a panel member. Further specialist expertise is currently being finalised. Gisborn Council Chief Executive Nedine Thatcher Swann said the council initiated the review to independently test whether its current approach is fit for purpose, proportionate to Tairāwhiti’s environmental risks, and clear and workable in practice. “Tairāwhiti’s highly erodible land, steep terrain, severe weather exposure and downstream risks mean our regulatory approach needs to reflect the realities of our region,” she said. “Council has significantly strengthened its forestry consenting, monitoring and enforcement capability since 2018, and we have also been working closely with the forestry sector to improve our processes and standard consent conditions. “That work has been constructive, but concerns continue to be raised about consenting requirements, compliance settings, costs and processing timeframes. Rather than continue debating those issues from different positions, we want them independently tested against the evidence.” The focused review will examine a representative sample of consenting and compliance files and selected consent conditions, and test concerns raised by the sector against processing records, operational examples and other relevant evidence. It will consider whether requirements are proportionate to risk, whether conditions are clear and practical, whether processes are efficient and consistently administered, and whether improvements could reduce unnecessary cost or uncertainty while maintaining strong environmental outcomes. The review will also distinguish between matters council can address itself and issues that may require cooperation with the forestry sector or clearer national direction. “This is about independently testing what we are doing, confirming what is working well and being prepared to change what needs improving,” Ms Thatcher Swann said. “The review will give us a clear evidence base for any subsequent improvement work. “We want a regulatory system that protects our environment and communities, gives responsible forestry operators greater certainty, and supports appropriate, sustainable forestry and land use across Tairāwhiti.” Council will provide the information and access required for the review but will not direct the panel’s findings. An initial findings report is expected within six weeks of the panel’s formal appointment.

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Forest & Wood Communities Australia says claims that the new Improved Native Forest Management carbon method provides a settled scientific and economic case for closing NSW native forestry ignore serious unresolved questions about carbon leakage, timber substitution and the governance of the process that produced the method. Source: Timberbiz FWCA Chair Steve Dobbyns said recent comments by former NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service Deputy Secretary Atticus Fleming, arguing that forestry scientists should simply “accept the umpire’s decision”, failed to address the substance of growing technical criticism of the INFM Method. “Approval of a methodology does not make the science beyond question,” Mr Dobbyns said. “Forestry Australia’s forest-carbon specialists have warned that the INFM Method could potentially over-credit claimed abatement by 40 to 100 per cent, even before the full consequences of leakage and carbon stored in harvested wood products are taken into account. “Those are serious integrity questions that cannot simply be dismissed as an industry refusing to accept an umpire’s decision.” Plantation pine does not simply replace native hardwood. Mr Dobbyns said Mr Fleming’s claim that declining Australian native forest production had largely been replaced by plantation timber from Australia, New Zealand and Vietnam fundamentally misunderstood the timber market. “Firstly, New Zealand and Vietnam are imports, so citing them as evidence against import leakage is an extraordinary argument,” Mr Dobbyns said. “More importantly, plantation softwood does not simply substitute for native hardwood. “Research led by forest economist Dr Tyron Venn shows plantation softwood is an imperfect substitute for native forest timber and, in many building applications, softwood and hardwood are complementary products rather than interchangeable ones. “You do not replace hardwood flooring, decking, appearance-grade joinery, poles, piles and many structural or durability applications simply by producing more radiata pine. “Venn’s research found that when Australian native forest production falls, demand does not disappear. A substantial proportion of that lost production is displaced into imported timber. “That is the leakage problem the INFM Method has failed to adequately address.” Mr Dobbyns said the climate question therefore could not stop at the State forest boundary. “If NSW stops producing a renewable timber product and Australia then imports a large proportion of the replacement volume, the carbon consequences of those imports have to be counted. “That includes harvesting overseas, processing, international transport and the risk that displaced production occurs in countries with weaker forest governance and poorer environmental standards. “A carbon accounting method that counts the apparent gain in NSW while inadequately accounting for the emissions and forest impacts transferred elsewhere risks creating paper abatement rather than genuine global climate benefit.” Serious governance questions remain. FWCA said Mr Fleming’s intervention also highlighted legitimate questions about the governance of the Great Koala National Park and INFM processes. Mr Fleming was not simply an independent observer of those processes. As a senior executive of the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, he chaired key elements of the Great Koala National Park assessment process. NPWS also stood to become the manager of a greatly expanded national park estate if the proposal proceeded. Evidence to NSW Budget Estimates has also established that Mr Fleming and the GKNP steering process were involved in progressing the proposal for Professor Andrew Macintosh and the Australian National University to develop a carbon methodology capable of generating ACCUs from stopping native forest harvesting. The NSW Government subsequently confirmed that development of the carbon method was specifically linked to the proposed Great Koala National Park. “None of that, by itself, proves improper conduct,” Mr Dobbyns said. “But it creates an obvious governance question that deserves a transparent answer. “Was it appropriate for the head of the government agency that stood to become one of the principal beneficiaries of a massive expansion of the national park estate to chair the assessment process, be involved in progressing the carbon-method proposal intended to help fund that outcome, and then publicly advocate ending the industry affected by it? “This is not necessarily a question of personal financial conflict. It is a question of whether competing public duties and institutional interests were properly identified, separated and managed. “Public confidence requires more than simply telling affected communities that the process has reached the desired outcome and they should now accept it.” Fifteen years of credits, a century of consequences. FWCA also questioned claims that carbon income would provide a sustainable replacement for the economic contribution of the native forest industry. The INFM provides a 15-year crediting period, while forest management obligations and the economic consequences of removing productive forests continue for generations. “Carbon credits may generate revenue for 15 years, but managing national parks, maintaining roads and fire access, controlling weeds and pests and protecting communities from wildfire does not stop in year 16,” Mr Dobbyns said. “Nor does Australia stop needing hardwood.” Mr Dobbyns said the integrity test for the INFM should be straightforward. “Count the regrowth that occurs after sustainable harvesting. “Count the carbon that remains stored in harvested wood products. “Count the substitution benefits where timber replaces more emissions-intensive materials. “Count the additional imports. “Count the overseas forest impacts and transport emissions. “And assess the carbon outcome over the life of the forest rather than selecting an accounting period that maximises the number of credits produced. “If the INFM Method still delivers genuine additional abatement after all of those factors are properly accounted for, it should withstand that scrutiny. “But dismissing legitimate scientific criticism and telling forest scientists, workers and regional communities to simply ‘accept the umpire’s decision’ is no substitute for answering the evidence.”

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The Timber, Furnishing and Textiles Union (TFTU) has slammed the Rockliff Government’s push for a parliamentary inquiry into the Rushy Lagoon plantation project as an attack on Tasmanian timber workers and the future of the state’s forestry industry. Source: Timberbiz TFTU Tasmanian Secretary Danny Murphy said the Government had already been warned what the project would mean for workers, industry and regional communities. “Only weeks ago, we wrote to every Tasmanian parliamentarian explaining that Rushy Lagoon was a major win for our industry, workers and communities. “It means greater security of future timber supply, more investment in value-adding and more jobs in planting, harvesting, haulage, sawmilling and manufacturing. “For decades, Tasmanian governments of both political persuasions have given bipartisan support to the forestry industry and the jobs of timber workers. “We are shocked that the Rockliff Government would now take this action and ignore the concerns raised by timber workers and their union.” The final report of Australia’s Timber Fibre Strategy identifies the need for new plantation investment to secure Australia’s future timber supply. It also recognises the role of the ACCU Scheme in making productive commercial plantations viable and the opportunities for forestry and agriculture to work alongside each other. “If the Rockliff Government genuinely supports Tasmania’s timber industry, it should listen to the workers, families and communities that depend on it. “These trees mean jobs. They mean work in our forests, on our roads and in our mills and timber to build Tasmanian homes for decades. “Instead of backing that investment, the Government is establishing an inquiry whose terms put plantation forestry and the Commonwealth policies supporting it under the microscope. “The cat is already out of the bag. Agricultural lobby groups are calling for the inquiry to go beyond Rushy Lagoon and examine the wider policies supporting plantation forestry. “This is no longer just an inquiry into the sale of one farm. The Rockliff Government is opening the door to a broader attack on productive plantation forestry. “Timber workers will not stand by while our industry is demonised and the future resource on which our jobs depend is put at risk. “You cannot claim to support timber workers while putting the plantations their future jobs depend on in the dock. “This is social and economic vandalism dressed up as scrutiny.”

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For more than three decades, Australia’s hardwood plantation industry has been built on a simple but largely successful business model: growing world-class plantation fibre for export to Asia’s pulp mills. It has underpinned regional economies, attracted significant investment and established Australia as one of the world’s most reliable suppliers of hardwood fibre. Source: Tim Woods, lead developer of The Precinct project But global markets are changing and have been for more than a decade. The export model that has served the industry so well is increasingly vulnerable. Recent export data points to more than a temporary downturn. It signals a structural shift in the global fibre market that has reinforced industry’s determination to pursue alternative means to capture value from the nation’s plantation resource. Australian woodchip exports have fallen by more than 10% over the past year, with April export volumes declining 45% compared with the previous month. While commodity markets inevitably fluctuate, the more significant story lies in changing demand from Australia’s largest customer. China’s pulp industry is becoming ever less reliant on imported Australian hardwood fibre. A prolonged slowdown in China’s domestic housing market has released significant volumes of locally sourced fibre into the supply chain, reducing reliance on imported woodchips and enabling manufacturers to produce satisfactory pulp from a lower-cost fibre mix. Vietnam has the market At the same time, competition from Vietnam has intensified. During the first four months of 2026, China’s imports of Vietnamese hardwood chips increased by 20.2% to 4.054 million bone dry metric tonnes (BDMT), while Australian shipments fell 17.7% to just 0.757 million BDMT over the same period. Vietnam now accounts for virtually all of China’s growth in hardwood chip imports, with total Chinese imports increasing 11.4% in early 2026. Meantime, Australian supply went backwards. The competitive landscape is also changing on price. Vietnamese hardwood chips averaged around USD175 FOB/BDMT in April, compared with Australia’s average of US$166 FOB/BDMT. More importantly, Vietnamese suppliers have increased prices by approximately 25% since September 2025 while remaining below the landed cost of Australian fibre in China. Australian export prices have risen by only around 8% over the same period, reflecting weaker market demand and Australia’s diminishing pricing power. This is a structural change For many years, Australian hardwood plantations enjoyed a clear competitive advantage. High-quality Eucalyptus globulus, dependable supply and Australia’s reputation as a politically stable trading partner meant local fibre attracted a premium whenever global pulp markets strengthened. Today that advantage is eroding as Chinese manufacturers diversify supply sources, optimise fibre blends and reduce dependence on Australian imports. Taken together, these trends point to something far more significant than a cyclical downturn. They represent a structural shift in the global fibre market. The critical question for Australia is no longer whether we can compete harder in an increasingly crowded commodity market. It is whether exporting raw fibre is the highest-value use of one of our most important renewable resources. Diversification to meet sovereign needs The same plantation estate is equally capable of producing higher-value engineered wood products that support advanced manufacturing of dwelling components and dwellings, skilled regional employment and sovereign industrial capability. There is no better demonstration of this potential than Stage One of The Precinct project – the Hardwood Timber Manufacturing Hub. The now delivered preliminary feasibility study proves that instead of exporting low-value fibre and importing finished building products, Australia has an opportunity to capture far greater economic value through domestic processing and integration into the built environment. The timing could not be better. As export markets become more competitive, Australia faces an unprecedented housing challenge. Governments across the country are actively pursuing faster, more productive construction methods through prefabrication, modular housing and mass timber construction. The release of the National Housing Strategy at the recent ALP National Conference reinforces the growing policy focus on housing productivity, sovereign manufacturing and modern methods of construction. From plantations, to products, to prefabrication Yet despite this opportunity, Australia continues to import around $1 billion worth of engineered wood products, plywood and wood panels each year, while exporting much of the raw fibre needed to manufacture them. In effect, Australia is exporting the raw material while importing the finished products needed to build homes. This approach captures manufacturing jobs, innovation and economic returns offshore, despite Australia possessing the plantation resource, technical capability, relatively stable and growing domestic market to do that work locally. Shifting from exporting fibre and importing value-added products, Australia has the opportunity to extend an integrated domestic manufacturing sector that converts plantation resources into engineered wood products, prefabricated building systems and integrated dwelling solutions. This is precisely where The Precinct represents a fundamentally different proposition. The Precinct is being designed as an integrated, advanced manufacturing ecosystem that brings together plantation resources, engineered wood products, prefabrication, dwelling component manufacturing and circular economy principles, within a single regional supply chain. Its importance lies in recognising the future for the value chain lies in integrated manufacturing that has a laser focus on delivering dwelling solutions, in the national interest. Importantly, this transition aligns with the direction of government policy. Housing productivity, sovereign manufacturing, regional industrial development and lower-emissions construction are no longer separate policy objectives, they are increasingly part of the same national agenda. Developments to deliver this integrated agenda will define much of Australia’s housing future. The latest export figures should therefore be viewed not as a hurdle for Australia’s plantation industry, but as a catalyst for transformation. Australia has always adapted to changing markets. The next chapter will be led and won by creating more value from our resources, sophisticated and integrated sovereign supply chains that are focussed on delivering the next generation of housing, employment and regional economic resilience.

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The recent sale of Rushy Lagoon has sparked plenty of debate. Unfortunately, some of it is turning into an argument about forestry versus farming, which doesn’t help anyone. Tasmania does not need to choose between forestry and farming. We need both, and we need them working together. Our farmers produce some of the best food and fibre in the world. They employ Tasmanians, support local businesses and keep our regional communities strong. The right to farm is important and it should be protected. The forestry industry agrees with that. But forestry is also a productive use of land. Across Tasmania, farming and forestry have been working side by side for generations. Drive through rural Tasmania and you see it everywhere. Sheep and cattle in one paddock, trees in another. Crops on the flats, plantations on the hills. It isn’t particularly complicated, and until recently it wasn’t particularly controversial. Farmers understand better than most that not every hectare is the same. Different soils, slopes, rainfall and locations suit different uses. That’s why decisions about land use should be based on the land itself, the science and what makes sense for the people who own and manage it. The right tree, in the right place, at the right scale. Provided people meet the rules that apply to them, landowners should be able to decide what they grow on their own land. That principle matters to farming and it matters to forestry too. One part of the current debate that is concerning, is the increasingly negative way pine plantations are being talked about. Pine is a crop. It is planted. It grows. It is harvested. And it is replanted. Tasmanian businesses have been successfully growing plantation pine for decades. Those plantations employ people in our regional communities and support contractors, truck drivers, mechanics, sawmills, manufacturers and plenty of other local businesses. A single hectare of softwood plantation can produce enough timber to build around four houses, manufacture about 700 shipping pallets and supply more than 100 metres of fencing timber. We have a housing shortage. We want to build more homes. We want those homes to be affordable. And we want as much of the money spent building them as possible to stay here, supporting Tasmanian jobs and Tasmanian businesses. For that, we need timber. Plantation forestry also gives landowners another option. On the right land, trees can provide shelter for livestock, help with erosion and soil stability and provide a long-term income stream alongside other farming activities. None of this means every farm should become a plantation. Of course it shouldn’t. Good agricultural land is valuable. Tasmania needs productive farms and successful farmers. Equally, land that is well suited to growing trees should not suddenly be regarded as less productive simply because the crop being grown takes 25 or 30 years rather than a season. People who make their living from the land have a pretty strong incentive to look after it. Their businesses depend on it, and often they hope their children and grandchildren will still be earning a living from that same land decades from now. That long-term view matters in forestry as much as it does in farming. The truck driver carrying timber today might carry agricultural produce tomorrow. The local mechanic fixes machinery from both industries. Both industries use local contractors, shops and services. Tasmania’s future won’t be strengthened by picking winners between two industries that have successfully coexisted for generations. It will be strengthened by experienced landowners making good decisions about their land, backed by good science and sensible rules. There will be places best suited to farming. There will be places best suited to forestry. And there will be plenty of places where the two continue to work side by side. That’s simply how regional Tasmania works. Drew Freeman is CEO of the Tasmanian Forest Products Association

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