Australia's softwood plantation industry will benefit from a new National Institute for Forest Products Innovation hub in Mount Gambier, and new commercial applications.
The new hub was launched in February at the University of South Australia's Mount Gambier campus. Funded with $4 million from the Australian and South Australian Governments, its objective is to improve the efficiency of Australia's softwood plantation industry.
"Forestry is truly a sunrise industry - there is great potential in the new frontiers such as bio-materials and bio-plastics", Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources Senator Anne Ruston said at launch.
The hub's research will be broadly applicable to softwood plantations regions across Australia, she said, but its immediate effects will be felt in the state's South East community.
South Australia has a long tradition of plantation forests dating back to the establishment of some of Australia's first forest plantation trials in the 1870s. But across Australia, the sector is on the rise, with 26 million cubic metres harvested in 2015-2016 after three years of consecutive growth.
There are also promising developments in the more innovative use of softwood plantation product. An example for this is Melbourne based company 3RT Technologies. Working together with researchers from Flinders University, the company has developed a new technology through which plantation softwood can be converted into high-value tropical hardwood-like product. The innovation has recently received Australian Government support through an Accelerating Commercialisation Grant under the Entrepreneurs' Programme ( see also our story Speeding to market).