A wood-supply catchment approach
While the Hawke's Bay has many areas well-suited to growing durable eucalypts, our initial vision is for a sustainable hardwood industry centred on a small-to-medium processing operation in Wairoa. The operation could be located on industrial land to the north of the river, where there is an existing sawmill.
For an economically viable, sustainable processing operation, an estimated 5,000 hectares of durable eucalypts will need to be planted over the next 30 years, to generate an average annual harvest of 50,000 tonnes of resource for the mill*. This equates to around 170 ha/year of new planting for 30 years.
There are over 175,000 hectares of farmland in Land Use Capability (LUC) classes 5-7 within a 40km radius of Wairoa, plus a further 60,000+ hectares of forestry plantations. The map below shows where the 40km indicative catchment boundary lies.
Around 2.1% of the total land area identified as having potential needs to be converted to durable eucalypts to sustainably supply a small-to medium processing operation.
(* Data based on modelling done by Scion using the Woodscape model, 2020)