The Wairarapa, with its frequent hot dry summers, thriving existing forest industry, large areas of pastoral farming on highly erodible soil types, and potential markets for durable timber, is an ideal place for a sustainable regional hardwood industry. With the support of Greater Wellington Regional Council, local landowners and businesses, NZDFI is promoting durable eucalypts as a diversification opportunity for landowners.
Our vision is for a sustainable hardwood industry to be centred on a small-to-medium-sized processing operation at the existing forestry hub at Waingawa, south of Masterton.
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 170ha/yr for the next 30 years.
There are over 181,000 hectares of farmland in Land Use Capability (LUC) classes 5-7 within a 40km radius of Waingawa, plus a further almost 38,000 hectares of forestry plantations. 5,000 hectares of new durable hardwood planting represents around 2.3% of this total land area.
(* Data based on modelling done by Scion using the Woodscape model, 2020)
Suitable land in Masterton wood-supply catchment:
LUC 5 7,446 ha
LUC 6 139,886 ha
LUC 7 33,694 ha
Plantation 37,992 ha
Total suitable land: 219,018 ha
Map: Developing a sustainable durable hardwood industry in the Wairarapa: proposed wood supply catchment centred on Waingawa, Masterton (click to enlarge).
Watch our video of Wairarapa land owners and land managers explaining their reason for backing durable eucalypts.
The Wairarapa has been one of the NZDFI's priority regions throughout it's initial development phase.
The region has a number of significant advantages which will make durable eucalypts an ideal land-use diversification for farm and forest owners:
The Waingawa forestry hub is located just off State Highway 2 to the south of Masterton, adjacent to the railway line. The area, which is in Carterton District, is industrially zoned, and is home to several thriving large-scale forestry enterprises including:
Aspects to be addressed in later stages of planning for a new processing site would include power and water supply, waste disposal, and how to make optimum use of sawmilling residues - for example in generation for heat and power or re-processing into other products. In future we see a strong demand for all co-products of forests as new technologies for processing woody biomass are developed.
A second option for a new processing plant which could be considered in future is for a smaller post and pole processing plant centred somewhere close to Martinborough. Martinborough is home to the Wairarapa's wine industry and we anticipate a ready demand for untreated posts and poles. Log supply would come from a catchment within 20-30km of Martinborough.
C/- Marlborough Research Centre Trust, PO Box 875, Blenheim 7201