The ground-breaking Forests for Life plan provides a detailed and costed transition plan for the forestry sector and for timber workers in our South West and shows how a world-class Farm Forestry timber industry and Landcare initiative can underpin the next century of prosperity for the South West and Great Southern. This includes growing 20,000ha of high value, fast growing trees in the South West zone centring on Greenbushes and 20,000ha in the Great Southern zone centring on Albany. Each year 3,000 – 4,000 hectares would be planted, yielding an estimated 450,000 – 600,000 cubic metres of high-value timber per year once mature and providing a viable quantity of logs to a future processing centre.

Build two new processing facilities for engineered wood products and prefabricated structural applications in the Great Southern and South West.

The increasing demand for timber (through certified sustainable timber demand, growing markets in Asia, and the WA Government’s Wood Encouragement policy), as well as increasing awareness of and demand for engineered wood products such as cross-laminated timber are massive drivers that can be harnessed by this proposal.

Engineered wood products and construction timbers offer a vast range of low-carbon products that substitute for more carbon-intensive materials such as steel and concrete. The program would capitalise on excellent new peeling technology which provides for a recovery rate of up to 90% of timber from logs (currently the native forest industry achieves about 30% recovery from sawlogs).

Feasibility studies for two new processing facilities for engineered wood products, and a  new partnership with the Forest Products Commission to establish a sustainable timber building materials production, research, training and innovation hub in Collie, focussed on production and utilisation of sustainable plantation timber resources and farm forestry products is recommended.

Supporting local industries in nature-based tourism and honey production.