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Vehicles used for infield haulout will need to be suitable for off-road use and have low ground
pressures. Depending on the row configuration and if low stumps are left by the harvester, rubber
tracks or low floatation tyres will need to be considered.
Consideration could be given to pre-processing at roadside landings, involving upgrading processes
such as chip separation, oil distillation, drying and even pellet manufacture. This would improve the
marketing of the biomass, by placing the emphasis of the long-haul road transport upon the movement
of specific value-added products to appropriate markets. However costs and efficiencies of the several
options would need to be assessed.
The need for and role of material stockpiles will need to be evaluated in terms of the supply chain
management and impact on product quality. Stockpiles are a risk management strategy and can ensure
continuous feedstock supply in case of interruptions (for example fire, flood, soft soils, and major
mechanical breakdowns).
The grain transport trailers that are common in the wheat belt regions do not have the volumetric
capacity for biomass. The wood chip transport systems are geographically somewhat distant from
mallee areas and they rely, partly for historical reasons, upon the use or rear discharge by tipping or
walking floors. This requires that road trains be decoupled and reassembled for every load, which
imposes extra cost upon woodchip transport compared grain transport, which can empty trucks
through a grizzly screen. The mallee industry will have the opportunity to avoid this problem if it
adopts side loading and unloading from the outset. If the materials handling process from the point of
harvest is containerised, then side loading and unloading can be accommodated using the principles of
sea container swing-lift technology.
The nature of the biomass material to be delivered needs to be well defined to allow the most suitable
transport system to be developed. Appropriate strategies will need to be developed for transport
configurations such that the bulk density of material is not reduced.
Existing and potential haulout and road transport systems have been reviewed but conceptual designs
of the alternative new systems need to be developed and proper financial analysis conducted.
Comparisons of existing and potential systems need to be thorough and systematic.
A resource inventory of the existing mallee in Western Australia is essential for proper analysis of
alternative transport systems and development of the early commercial operations. It will also assist in
planning and guiding future expansion of the mallee resource so as to maximise transport efficiency.
Products, processing and impacts on supply chain
The development of a viable industry based on oil mallee cannot happen “overnight”, however
analysis of the potential for downstream products to support a large scale industry is promising.
The industry cannot, however, develop on the back of current products such as the boutique oil
industry. The magnitude of the potential supply will overwhelm the current market. Extracted oil is
seen as an important potential product, but as an industrial product, and as a strategy to value add the
leaf material. At the projected prices, it is not a viable product in its own right.
Similarly, a number of small-scale options exist which can offer very attractive markets for limited
production quantities. Such markets include thermal energy for abattoirs and feedmilling, and the
generation of electricity for use on-site. The former displaces LPG and diesel as heat sources, and the
latter displaces local diesel fuelled systems, or perhaps when used on-site as an alternative to retail
electricity purchased off the grid. When combined thermal plus electrical energy may be generated
more efficiently from the biomass. Both these will remain as markets, but are limited in size.
Significantly, technologies such as combined heat and power and the technology development to
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