Marcus Musson
Exporting primary products from New Zealand has long been celebrated and underpins our economy and way of life. We all hail increased dairy and meat exports, are more than happy our best fruit and crayfish go offshore but throw our toys out of the cot about log exports.
Most elections will see some ill-informed politician standing in front of a wharf full of logs pontificating about keeping the logs for our local industry. Builders are quick to point the finger at log exporters for high lumber prices and supply issues assuming it’s caused by the log exports.
For perspective, think of trees as sheep and cows. They’re all cut into different products for different markets.
Your favourite restaurant in Parnell isn’t likely to serve you up a medium-rare sheep bladder and the pet food factory probably doesn’t have much demand for a lamb rack. Logs are no different except, unlike the fruit and fishing industries, we keep most of our good product here for our domestic sawmills and export bladder and brains grades of logs. One tree may have as many as 10 different log grades within one stem. Wood quality/value diminishes the further up the tree you go. Local sawmills can’t make money sawing lower grade logs, whereas export markets such as China have much lower production costs, so they can afford to spend more time reconstituting lower grade logs into usable products.
To put forestry’s valuable export earnings into perspective as well as its importance in reducing emissions, it’s essential to understand that log exports are a vital part of its functioning. As with the sheep and beef industry, you need a solution for the whole animal, you can’t just sell medium-rare bladders to Parnell and throw the lamb rack away.
t’s easy for Joe Average to get a slanted view on log exports as our industry differs from many others in that logs are very visible on trucks, trains and in ports. Timber is not. Timber is delivered to retailers dry, wrapped in plastic and transported in curtain sider trucks which are indistinguishable from those carrying cornflakes.
Log exports are just part of a much more diversified set of products that just aren’t that visible to people in port cities. Locally manufactured wood products are, however, a big part of many of our daily lives whether we notice it or not. If you write on it or wipe on it, build with it or burn it, wood products from our radiata pine forests around the regions are generally taken for granted.
So next time you’re listening to someone spout off about all our logs going offshore and a lack of framing timber in New Zealand, you can rebut their ill-informed opinion with the following facts:
- Local timber shortages are due to a lack of domestic sawing and kiln drying capacity, not log exports. The entire NZ log production could never be sawn locally.
- Log exports are just one part of the log (usually the top half or less) that is produced and sold.
- Forest owners, like every other private business, have the right to sell what they own to whomever they want.
- Logs go into many products, some are solid wood that store carbon over their lifetime; others of lower quality are valued by overseas buyers for a range of uses, but mainly as formwork in the construction of high-rise buildings in China.
- Logs are valued by manufacturers in China because radiata pine is a versatile product.
- Countries like Russia have imposed export tariffs on log exports – this is outside our control, and something our small and vulnerable government would never consider in a market economy.
- Forest and wood products are a vital piece of our economy and fit well into our ways of earning a living for rural communities and respective forest owners, large and small.
Marcus Musson is the Director of Forest360.
