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NZ government knocks back funding for hardwood

Arsenic in the soil from thousands of tanalised pine posts led to the search for an alternative. It has taken 10 years, but the group formed to undertake the research and grow the wood, the New Zealand Dryland Forests Initiative, has reached a crucial stage. Sources: Stuff.co NZ, Fairfax News NZ

Seven eucalypt species have been identified as having the ideal qualities. Seed has been collected, trials planted on farms throughout both islands and the best trees are starting to show.

At the same time, new markets far beyond the 450,000 posts a year needed for Marlborough vineyards alone have been discovered.

Posts for the kiwifruit industry, organic farms or just general farm use; rail sleepers, power poles and crossarms in New Zealand, Australia and Asia, timber for bridges and wharfs and for home flooring and decking.

But just as this budding industry initiative is in most need of funding to meet its potential, it has received a knockback.

In the latest round of government funding it wasn’t able to meet the requirement of producing $200m in exports by 2030 and missed on the $3m it had asked for.

This annoys Paul Millen, the initiative’s project manager.

“It’s very frustrating,” he says. “Government support of our food export industries is important, but this is underpinning the infrastructure needed for export industries and has huge domestic value.

“We estimate it could replace $25m of imported tropical hardwood a year and that exports could be worth $2b by 2050.”

While some of the initiative’s work can carry on, supported by a Sustainable Farming Fund grant, its tree improvement program needs funding. So far, $2m has been spent, including $700,000 provided by the start-up partners in the first five years.

Millen and his brother Ash, who own a mixed species forestry block, got the project underway in 2003 after a local wine grower wanted untreated timber posts.

“We had planted eucalypts but much to my frustration we found our wood wasn’t durable enough. I went to other growers but it soon become evident we had no resource of Class 1 durable eucalypts in New Zealand.”

Millen then enlisted Marlborough Research Centre chief executive Gerald Hope to help. They decided to contact Millen’s former Canterbury University School of Forestry classmate Shaf van Ballekom, chief executive of Proseed, a tree seed supplier.

Van Ballekom knew a science-based program would be needed to grow the best trees and he suggested approaching their old wood science professor, John Walker.

Millen frankly admits he was scared of meeting Walker again.

“I remembered him as being a tough guy to please and I worried he would laugh at the idea.”

Walker didn’t laugh, but he still needed convincing. He agreed to visit a Marlborough mill and see posts of Class 3 eucalypt being sawn. They weren’t as durable as the Class 1 that was the ideal but Walker quickly became excited as acoustic tests showed the posts were much denser and stronger than any radiata pine he had measured.

A meeting with Walker, Hope, van Ballekom and the Millens followed and the Dryland Forests Initiative was formed.

They decided to look for the most durable and strongest wood, regardless of species. Natives such as totara were rejected because of their long growing time while eucalypts were fast-growing and had many Class 1 species with seeds available just across the Tasman.

Seeds collected from trees in southeast Australia were sown and trials begun in Marlborough.

Of 25 species tested seven were chosen to develop further. Now, more than 100,000 trees are growing on 20 sites from Bay of Plenty to North Canterbury.

Canterbury University researchers have developed world-first techniques to rapidly test large numbers and the bestforming “families” within each variety will be selected for further breeding.

Millen envisages 100,000 hectares of durable eucalypts planted to meet the local and export potential. And he is confident this will be possible as pine forests are logged over the next 10 years.

He is convinced New Zealand went down a blind alley when it planted large-scale pine forests.

“Radiata is a low-value wood in international markets. In New Zealand we use it for construction but it has to be treated. For farm, vineyard and kiwifruit posts it is treated with chrome, copper and arsenic, all toxic chemicals we don’t want in our soils.

“It breaks easily, is costly to replace and is hazardous to dispose of.”

By contrast, the eucalypt hardwoods don’t need to be treated and can last more than 25 years in the soil. The waste makes good firewood.

Millen thinks there’s a good case for a Government-backed replanting program that would see radiata pine replaced with eucalypt hardwoods.

“It’s not so far-fetched,” he says. “It happened in the 1980s when the wine industry realised it had made a big mistake by planting so many muller thurgau vines. The government paid to pull them out so they could be replaced by sauvignon blanc, and look at how successful that has been.”

He laments lost opportunities, like Wellington’s waterfront decking, built in 1998 from imported hardwood.

“Specimens of durable eucalypts are growing in the Botanical Gardens. Imagine a forest of them growing on Tinakori Hill.”

And then there’s KiwiRail’s importation of 7000 Peruvian sleepers, all of which rotted after five years.

Durable eucalypts were planted in Bay of Plenty in the 1930s to provide sleepers, but then the war came, priorities changed and the impetus was lost.

“All knowledge was lost and few trees now remain. That’s a tragedy I’m determined not to let happen again.”