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.
The plantation areas are presented by jurisdiction and National Plantation Inventory regions for softwood and hardwood plantation types, and species, based on data collected from private growers and grower representatives and public state and territory agencies.
In this report, 2020‒21 data are compared with data from the 2004-05, 2009-10, 2014-15 and 2019-20 5 yearly spatial plantation reports (5 and 1 year intervals).
A high resolution version of the Australian Plantation statistics 2022 - Infographic is available in the download section below
Figure 1 The total plantation area declined further in 2020-21 as some hardwood plantations were converted to another land use and revisions to the softwood plantation estate
Figure 2 Together New South Wales and Victoria have over 50 % of the softwood plantations and Tasmania and Western Australia have over 50 % of the hardwood plantations in 2020-21
Figure 3 New plantation establishment remained low at around 1500 hectares in 2020-21
Figure 4 Most softwood plantations are radiata pine plantations and are managed for sawlog production. The Murray Valley has the greatest proportion of radiata plantations followed by the Green Triangle
Figure 5 The majority of hardwood plantations are Tasmanian blue gum and shining gum mainly managed for pulpwood production
Figure 6 Plantation ownership by jurisdiction in 2020–21 shows the majority of Australia’s plantations continue to be privately owned
Figure 7 Plantation ownership has seen increasing dominance of institutional investors as they purchased most MIS plantations and some public plantations
Download
Australian plantation statistics 2022 update (PDF 1.47 MB)
Australian plantation statistics 2022 update (DOCX 2.21 MB)
Australian Plantation statistics 2022 - Infographic (PDF 880 KB)
Supporting data tables (XLSX 69 KB)
If you have difficulty accessing these files, contact ABARES.
Download
Australian plantation statistics 2020 update (PDF 1.71 MB)
Australian plantation statistics 2020 update( DOCX 3.28 MB)
Australian plantation statistics 2018 update (PDF 3.51 MB)
Australian plantation statistics 2016 (PDF 23.5 MB)
If you have difficulty accessing these files, contact ABARES.