Momentum is building around the AFPA proposal for a research and development institute to coordinate forestry, wood and paper products R&D across Australia. Sources: AFPA, Timberbiz
“Our budget bid for $40 million over four years is all about moving the productivity curve – in a way only Government, with levers which reach into federal and state agencies, can do,” said AFPA CEO Ross Hampton.
“Over the last decade research and development has been decimated in the forest, wood and paper products industries. The list is dreadful. The CRC for Forestry – closed. The Forestry Division in CSIRO – abolished. And it goes on.”
Hampton said that since 2008 the number of forestry researchers has shrunk from more than 700 to about 250 and funding from $100 million to less than a third.
“Our industry R&D is now thinly spread and disaggregated,” he said.
“We no longer have the critical mass of experienced researchers for some of the more fundamental research tasks.
“And yet if you look at our competitor countries investment in forestry R&D is roaring the other way. New Zealand, Canada, Europe, the United States … in these places they are heavily backing R&D to give their domestic forest products industries a head start in a massive global opportunity.”
Hampton said the forest products market of the next decades will not just be about timber for buildings and furniture, which have exciting new uses in high rise construction and engineered products, but about a vast new family of products derived from the fibre and cellulose of trees.
It is everything from ‘smart packaging’ that senses overheating, through to renewable energy and biofuels to replacement biodegradable products for plastic parts. It is a multi-billion dollar opportunity.
