Australian plantation statistics 2018 update

Overview
Australian plantation statistics is published every year. It supports strategic forest industry planning and decision-making by presenting information on total plantation area, new planting and ownership.

ABARES has prepared this report under the auspices of the National Plantation Inventory (NPI). The NPI has surveyed public and private plantation growers and managers to collect data on plantations established primarily for wood production in Australia since 1993.

In this report plantation areas are presented by NPI regions for softwood and hardwood plantation types, species, jurisdiction, based on data collected from private growers and grower representatives and public state and territory agencies.

In this report 2016-17 data are compared with data from the 2006-07, 2011-12 and 2015-16 plantation reports.

Key Issues

Australia's total commercial plantation area was approximately 1,955,100 hectares in 2016-17, a decrease of 19,700 hectares (1.0 per cent) from 1,974,800 hectares in 2015-16. These plantations are located within the 15 NPI regions that also contain the vast majority of regional processing facilities (regional hubs) based on plantations. In 2016-17 the total area of softwood plantations was approximately 1,036,900 hectares, an increase of around 100 hectares from 2015-16. The total area of hardwood plantations was approximately 908,500 hectares, a decrease of around 19,800 hectares (2.1 per cent) since 2015-16.

In 2016-17 Victoria continued to have the largest total area of commercial plantations of Australia's states and territories (421,700 hectares), followed by New South Wales (394,400 hectares) and Western Australia (367,900 hectares).

The total area of new plantations established in 2016-17 was approximately 200 hectares, with half being hardwood and half softwood. All of the new plantations established in 2016-17 were privately owned.

In 2016-17 approximately 19,900 hectares of Australia's plantation estate was converted to another land use, all from hardwood plantations and the majority (78 per cent) in Western Australia.