Island Specialty Timbers Tender Results
http://www.islandspecialtytimbers.com.au
For the past three years I’ve been collecting, analysing and reporting blackwood log tender results from Island Specialty Timbers (IST) as, despite the miniscule volumes and generally poor quality, these are the only competitive blackwood log prices that are publically available.
Just for the fun of it I thought I would start collecting and analysing all the tender results. You never know what might turn up!
This data doesn’t have much market value. Besides blackwood, no one is going to invest money based on the tender results for the other specialty species, which are too slow growing to allow for profitable investment.
The best value this data has is to show what the marketplace might pay for premium quality timber. When Tasmanian public native forest oldgrowth and rainforest timbers are no longer available, will the marketplace come to better appreciate farm-grown Tasmanian blackwood?
Forestry Tasmania and the Tasmanian Government consider the management and harvesting of public native forest specialty timbers (including blackwood) as a taxpayer funded community service. So why does Forestry Tasmania/IST put these tiny volumes to tender and publish the results? What is the point?
Forestry Tasmania’s major product Tasmanian Oak has no price or market transparency. Why the need for competitive markets and price transparency for community-service specialty timbers, where there is no competitive markets and price transparency for eucalypt hardwood? It makes no sense!
IST was established ”to increase the recovery, availability and value of specialty timbers from harvesting activities in [Tasmanian] State forests”. Does IST achieve its stated objectives? Does it operate at a profit? We will never know!
Island Specialty Timbers has been operating for 25 years. In that time it has never produced a market report; and only in the last 3 years has Forestry Tasmania included IST sales highlights in its Annual Report.
http://www.forestrytas.com.au/about-us/publications
So far as I’m aware these are the only publically available competitive market log price results available anywhere in Australia!
30 million cubic metres of wood is harvested in Australia every year and all we have are competitive price results for less than 200 cubic metres! Isn’t that extraordinary??
Does the forest industry really want to encourage investment?
The size and quality of products tendered by IST varies enormously so it is difficult to draw conclusions from these results.
Remember these prices are equivalent to mill door log prices, so harvesting and transport costs are theoretically included in the prices.
All up over the 15 months 210 cubic metres of logs were sold by tender with total revenue of $162,000. An additional $18,100 revenue was received by Forestry Tasmania directly from Tasmanian taxpayers to compensate for the costs of harvesting this 210 cubic metres.
87 cubic metres remained unsold from the tender process. Few of the logs tendered were of premium (Category 4) grade, most of which are sold under private long term sales agreements, including virtually all of the Huon pine.
Five species attract strong demand and high prices, these being black heart sassafras, plain white sassafras, king-billy and huon pine and leatherwood with average log prices over $1,000 per cubic metre. Celery top pine sold for an average price of $530 per cubic metre. All of these species take 400-1,000 years to reach maturity so I suspect even these prices are cheap.
And don’t forget these public native forest specialty timbers come to you courteously of an $86.27 per cubic metre direct taxpayer subsidy.
https://blackwoodgrowers.com.au/2016/11/13/special-timbers-subsidised-charade-continues/
Black heart sassafras and blackwood made up 25% each of the successful tendered volume over this 15 month period, but made up 46% and 6% of the sales revenue respectively. Blackwood comprised 55% of unsold log volume, perhaps suggesting that the local Tasmanian market for plain grain blackwood is saturated. This is not surprising given you can buy plain grain select blackwood timber in Tasmania for the same price as Radiata pine.
https://blackwoodgrowers.com.au/2016/11/12/blackwood-timber-price-list-summary-2016/
The harvesting of specialty timbers from Tasmanian public native forests is neither profitable nor sustainable.
I will provide an update on IST tender results every six months.