The world’s largest producer of Indian sandalwood has expanded its processing capacity in the Kimberley’s Ord Irrigation Scheme to meet the demands of its ever-increasing annual harvest. Source: ABC News
Tropical Forestry Services (TFS) harvested 32,000 trees in the Ord this year, which were processed in Kununurra for domestic and export markets.
TFS has invested heavily in creating its Primary Processing Centre (PPC), which includes a wood production line custom built in Italy, and a number of other processing equipment designed by the company itself.
Due to the high value of the timber and the specialised technology inside, the security around the PPC is strong, complete with security fencing, guard patrols and 24/7 CCTV surveillance.
TFS’s development manager Johan Nortier said there were aspects of the processing he simply could not go into detail about.
“I’ll only give you a very broad explanation of how this all works, because a lot of our intellectual property is in here,” he said.
“Our function here is to prepare the wood for our oil distillation plant in Albany, and also for the various export wood markets in Asia and Europe.
“The machine works on scanning equipment and data-capturing to assist us in making decisions on how to process the wood for those various markets.
“We are very happy that we’ve developed some high-end equipment and machines over the last two years that’s been tested on our first major harvest this year.
“And we’ve been happy with the success-rate and productivity we got out of them.”
During the harvest period, the PPC operated 24 hours a day, creating a range of products including chips, gullies, manufacturing logs and heartwood billets.
There were 32,000 trees harvested in about two and a half months, which yielded around 300 tonnes of valuable heartwood. That represented a 10-fold increase in volume from the previous year.
TFS processing centre will need to expand further.
TFS owns and manages over 12,000 hectares of Indian sandalwood plantations across northern Australia and aims to plant an extra 7500 hectares over the next five years.
Mr Nortier said the PPC would continue to expand to meet the needs of larger harvests.
“What you see now is about 30% of where we need to be,” he said. “I’m currently developing three more machines which will be running by June next year and will assist us with more processing and better productivity.
“It’s a step-by-step process to meet our market demand and also gear ourselves up for when we get into bigger harvests.
“We need to plan for 800 hectares [harvested] three years from now. “We need to be able to process all of that wood in a timely manner.”
TFS will export its first shipment of processed wood to China this month, selling the heartwood for around $US150,000 a tonne (around $200,000 in Australian terms).
A decision on whether to build an Indian sandalwood oil distillation plant in northern Australia is yet to be made.
