Portable Sawmills: The Current and Potential Future Role in the Timber Supply Chain

Markets for rainforest cabinet timbers in north Queensland are currently limited. The vast majority of the logs come from private land due to the reduction of the resource with the World Heritage listing of the rainforest in 1988. For a variety of reasons, no market is available for logs for woodchip. Thus for landholders harvesting trees the main market for these species is the sawn-timber market. In north Queensland the single large-scale processor of logs, Ravenshoe Timbers Pty Ltd, only processes plantation grown softwoods. The potential buyers of hardwood logs are limited to a few small 'family' fixed-site mills and portable sawmillers. The markets these sawmillers service in turn are often long distances from north Queensland, which leads to high road or rail haulage costs. Additionally, these sawmillers face stiff competition from rainforest timbers of similar characteristics imported from developing countries where legislative requirements and cost of labour are not as onerous as those in Australia. It is important to ascertain what role the cabinet timber industry can play in the north Queensland economy and what role, if any portable sawmilling can play in a future timber industry. Potential exists for greater use of portable sawmills, to handle the relatively small volume of hardwood timber available, and reduce log transport and milling costs.