Characterization of fibre-managed plantation Eucalyptus globulus for non-structural applications from Tasmania, Australia

World-wide there is increasing motivation within the timber industry to manufacture high-value secondary wood products from lower-quality, underutilized hardwood resources. High-resolution information transfer along the supply chain is particularly important for forest industries transitioning away from high-quality native logs to fast grown, intensively managed forests. In Australia, over 80% of nearly one million hectares of plantation Eucalypts forest is managed for low-value pulplog production and approximately 97% is converted to woodchip. Because milled products from these logs contain large amounts of natural growth features, conventional sorting techniques categorize a high proportion of material in lower-value and non-merchantable grades. For most forest resources, visual grading is used to separate the resource into grades and provides a means to communicate material properties along the supply chain. Grades that allow higher diversity and occurrence of characteristics are less descriptive, resulting in low market value. Additionally, standards often do not correspond to consumer preferences. In Australia, there is no commercial availability of high-feature timber from plantation grown resources for non-structural products, in part because of restrictive grade standards which do not contain grade definitions suitable for the material.