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The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is investing more than US$8 million for five new projects to reduce wildfire risk, protect water quality, and improve forest health across the nation. Source: Timberbiz The announcement builds on Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L Rollins’ commitment to wildfire preparedness. USDA and its agencies are working together to take action to protect people, communities, and the natural resources on which this country depends. The Joint Chiefs’ Landscape Restoration Partnership Program is a collaborative effort between USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Forest Service to work across public-private boundaries and at a landscape scale. The US$8 million investment in new projects is in addition to US$32 million for 24 existing three-year-long Joint Chiefs’ projects. The five new projects are: Alabama – National Forests in Alabama “Alabama Chattahoochee Fall Line Restoring Longleaf” Colorado and Wyoming – Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest “Headwaters of the Colorado” Montana – Lolo National Forest “Blackfoot River Valley Landscape Mosaic” North Carolina – National Forests in North Carolina “Uwharries to Sandhills, Phase 2” Oregon – Mt. Hood National Forest “Hood River Wildfire and Watershed Resilience”. “Wildfires have no boundaries, and neither should our prevention work,” said Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz. “We need everyone at the table to deliver the kind of active management that will return our forests to health and productivity. Joint Chiefs’ puts local leaders in the driver’s seat, enabling cross-boundary work based on shared priorities with states, partners, industry, and forest landowners. It’s a win-win.” NRCS Chief Aubrey J.D. Bettencourt  said that with the Joint Chiefs’ Landscape Restoration Partnership, NRCS is implementing the Farmer-First mission with the nation’s foresters “Providing technical and financial assistance to private forest landowners is key to supporting locally led conservation, especially in the wildland-urban interface. This allows us to address multiple challenges in one project, such as reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire, protecting clean water, and improving wildlife habitat,” he said.  

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A carbon capture pilot plant came online at Metsä Group’s Rauma mill, where the company is testing the capture of pulp mill flue gases in cooperation with the technology company Andritz, the supplier of the pilot plant.  Source: Timberbiz Carbon capture is an existing technology, but it has not previously been used for pulp mill flue gases. During the autumn of 2025, various operating models will be tested concerning aspects such as energy consumption and the amount of carbon captured. The pilot period will also provide information about the need for flue gas treatment and the quality of the end product. “So far, the technology appears to be working well with the pulp mill’s flue gases,” said Kaija Pehu-Lehtonen, SVP Business Development and the Director of Metsä Group’s carbon capture project. As part of the piloting, Metsä Group will also investigate possibilities for a larger-scale demo plant for carbon capture at the Rauma mill site. The annual capacity of a demo plant would be 30,000 to 100,000 tonnes of captured carbon dioxide. No decision has been made regarding the project or the demo plant’s location. Implementing the project would require all technical and financial issues to be resolved. The larger-scale demo plant would have a capacity more than one hundred times that of the pilot plant, which can capture approximately one tonne of carbon dioxide per day. Bio-based carbon dioxide is a virtually untapped pulp mill side stream. Carbon dioxide can be used as a raw material – for example, in the chemical and fuel industries and it can serve as a replacement for fossil-based raw materials. Carbon capture does not increase wood use at the pulp mill, nor does it undermine production efficiency. “Capture-related investments are large, and the market is underdeveloped, so we’re proceeding gradually. In addition, the value chains from raw material to finished products are often new and complex, requiring close cooperation between the participants and an insight into industrial operations,” said Pehu-Lehtonen. Through its development activities, Metsä Group wants to promote the emergence of markets. However, market development also depends on regulation at the EU and national level, as well as on investment support for the green transition. State aid for the green transition will play a key role in accelerating industrial investment.

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Thanks to Indonesia, global imports of hardwood woodchips to Asia rose over the year-ended June 2025. Of the top five importers, Indonesia and Japan saw growth in hardwood chip imports, while Mainland China, Korea and Taiwan all saw reductions, according to latest analysis by the team at IndustryEdge. Source: IndustryEdge Source: Importing country statistics services and Wood Market Edge online * It is important to note that most countries in Asia report woodchip trade in GMT, while the main recipient countries – China and Japan – report in bone dried metric tonnes (BDMT). IndustryEdge has elected to report the data as presented by each country, in this analysis and in our raw data services. As a rough ‘rule of thumb’, one BDMT can be assumed to be equivalent to two GMT. Patterns of trade in the Asian hardwood woodchip market are continuing to change. In particular, China’s domestic hardwood chip supply is increasing from its very significant plantations. Just as important is the altering and tense market dynamics in the global pulp industry, which drives demand for hardwood woodchips. The role of Indonesia as a satellite producer for Chinese manufacturers, as well as its own growing demand profile and established pulp and paper industry is also altering the hardwood woodchip market, as the details demonstrate. Japan, by contrast, is more stable than China, in many respects. It is useful to consider imports of hardwood woodchips for specific countries, using data available on IndustryEdge’s Wood Market Edge online platform. Indonesia Indonesia’s hardwood woodchip imports lifted a very strong 134%, rising to 3.1 million green metric tonnes (GMT) in FY25. Although Thailand and Australia played small roles in Indonesia’s imports, Vietnam was entirely dominant, delivering more than 93% of hardwood chips for the year. Obviously, Indonesia’s import price is driven by the price of Vietnamese supply and there is little reason to show other prices. The weighted average import price for the year-ended June 2025 was USDCif102.25/GMT, up a modest 1.1% on the prior year. Japan Often the stabiliser in the market, Japan’s hardwood woodchip imports lifted 2.0% year-ended June 2025, rising to 9.2 million BDMT. With greater stability comes an emphasis on quality and pulp yields that sees shipments from Vietnam still dominate (46%) but a combination of Australia, Thailand and Chile providing 35% of total supply. Australia and Chile are producing and delivering eucalypt woodchips which deliver a higher pulp yield than supplies from Vietnam, Thailand and elsewhere in South East Asia. Nowhere is the quality of hardwood woodchips more evident than in country specific pricing. The table below shows weighted average annual import prices for each of the major supplier countries to Japan. Supply from Vietnam and Thailand is more than 20% cheaper than supply from Australia. Producers seeking higher pulp yields, brighter paper and often, lower chemical input costs maintain a steady diet of hardwood woodchips from Australia and Chile. China Although it may lack stability, China makes up for the shortcoming with massive import volumes. Year-ended June 2025, China imported 16.1 million BDMT of hardwood woodchips, down 1.6% on the previous year. Unsurprisingly, Vietnam supplied almost 72% of the total, with Australia a distant second delivering 15.3% of the total. Albeit at a different scale and with less stability than Japan, China’s hardwood woodchip imports are operating to the same dynamic when it comes to quality and yield considerations. That is, the South East Asian supply of mainly Acacia is the baseload, with quality delivered from Australian eucalypts, supplemented with small volumes from Chile. Again, the pricing for imports tells the story of quality, with supply from Vietnam averaging almost 30% cheaper than supply from Australia, on a delivered basis. Some of this difference is freight costs, but much of it is driven by the underlying quality of the plantation eucalypt resource in Australia. Some concluding thoughts In a large and slow-moving market, where harvest to pulp mill can be many months, the dynamics of hardwood woodchip markets are changing rapidly. The pressures on the Chinese economy are having an impact, as are its industrial and geo-political policies. In that context, the rise of Indonesia as a hardwood woodchip importer is all the more important to the global industry, especially the nearby producers like those in Australia’s West. Indonesia’s increasing emphasis on environmental standards, its rapid improvement in living standards and its status as the large Asian country with the youngest population, makes it a likely long term customer of the future. Japan appears to be a stable environment, which compared to the rest of the main market in Asia, is a blessing for importers and producers alike. For more information visit www.industryedge.com.au  

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