Paper Technology Journal 17 - Voith

The main reason why MTH continues to
be used in pulp production in Indonesia
is that the plantation establishment and
development programmes introduced in
the 1980s have failed to keep pace with
the rapid development of the industry.
Pulpwood demand has increased more
rapidly than the wood supply from plantations,
regardless of the plantation programmes
that all major companies have
been developing since the 1980s.
Mixed Tropical Hardwood
Mostly Used in Sawmilling and
Plywood Manufacturing
The estimated MTH volume used globally
for pulp production is 13 million m3 , i.e.
about 10 % of the total industrial use of
tropical wood. The balance is processed
into sawnwood and plywood, and used
mainly in construction, joinery and furniture
industries.
Production of tropical logs in ITTO (International
Tropical Timber Organization)
producer countries, which include the
great majority of tropical countries and
forests, decreased to 121 million m3 in
2002. Most of this wood (111 million m3 )
was processed within ITTO producer
countries and the balance (10 million m3 )
was exported to other countries (mainly
to Japan and the EU) for processing.
Roughly two thirds (74 million m3 ) of the
volume processed within ITTO countries
was processed into sawnwood and one
third (37 million m3 ) into plywood.
Mixed Tropical Hardwood
and Sustainability
Indonesia’s plantation development programme
was launched in the 1980s and
became widely applied in the early 1990s,
making Indonesia a leading plantation
forest country in Southeast Asia. Industrial
plantation forest concessions (called
HTI concessions) with an area up to
300,000 ha were granted to interested
parties. The pulpwood concession areas
consisted of different types of land and
forest, from tropical forests, already degraded
by selective cutting of plylogs and
sawlogs, to open grasslands. Any larger
unlogged virgin forests were left out from
the pulpwood concessions and smallerscale
undisturbed forests within the concessions
were strictly protected, not allowing
their conversion into plantations.
As a result, most of the MTH pulpwood
comes from conversion cuttings of degraded
natural forests, which are mainly
replanted by acacia and eucalypts.
Typically, only 30-50 % of the granted
gross concession area was suitable for
plantation establishment. The balance included
areas such as nature reserves, infrastructure
areas and low-quality land
unsuitable for planting. Since the 1980s,
plantation development has been ham-
Fig. 7: Pulpwood Demand Scenario in Indonesia.
Million m3
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
Actual
Scenario
Plantation
Pulpwood
Supply
MTH Harvest Requirement
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015
5
pered by many factors such as insufficient
funding, land ownership disputes
and forest fires, and there is a continuous
challenge to intensify plantation development
to keep pace with the industry’s
capacity growth. Political changes in
Indonesia have also put land-use issues
high on the agenda, as local people have
much more freedom and courage to
speak for themselves than in Suharto’s
time. These changes were not anticipated
in formulating the HTI pulpwood concession
policies and they have difficulties in
coping with these changes.
The first Indonesian pulp mill operating
100 % based on plantation wood is already
in operation (the Musi mill in
Sumatra). The use of plantation wood is
steadily increasing also in other mills.
There are different scenarios concerning
the future acacia pulpwood supply and
MTH pulpwood requirement in Indonesia.
The scenario presented in Fig. 7 is con-
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