Eucalyptus Grandis advice!

[joeyb52]

Hi all, I'm new to the forum and looking for a bit of guidance. I currently work in the lumber and hardware business but I'm considering getting into the logging industry. At the beginning of this year I went to Nicaragua to visit my cousin who owns a coffee farm in the northern mountain region. The farm is just under 500 acres with coffee growing everywhere. Among the coffee are 20,000 Eucalyptus Grandis trees (not native to the region) that my uncle planted about 25 years ago to help reduce the moisture in the soil. The trees are around 100'+ tall now and beginning to block the sun from reaching some of the coffee crops so he would like to harvest the trees and has offered me the opportunity to be his partner. There are a few things I need to figure out first and I'm hoping someone on this forum will be able to point me in the right direction.

The first thing that comes to mind is profitability, I need to figure out what the Eucalyptus will be worth. I'm thinking it would be best for me to sell them as sawlogs so I don't have to get involved with the drying and milling process but if any of you think I'd be leaving too much on the table, I'm willing to hear you out. Is there somewhere I can find current market prices?

One of the greatest obstacles to harvesting the trees will be that they are planted among all the coffee so I won't be able to get any kind of heavy machinery very close to them and when felling the trees I have to bee very careful not to damage the crops. Precision will be the operative word! I have a lot of experience rock climbing so I'm very comfortable around ropes and should be able to pick up on arborist rigs quickly. Does anyone have experience with this sort of delicate felling operation that could offer me some insight?

I've been doing as much research as I can and will continue to read up on the subject in the coming months. I'm hoping to be able to use this forum to throw out some questions and ideas. If you think of anything please feel free to throw it my way, any input is appreciated.

[florida]

Back about 15 years ago a friend of mine, Dave, had a gun store that he has operated for 20 years. He was tired of sitting and not being outside. One of his good friends had a nursery business selling trees, Live Oaks, Cypress, some palms, etc. but had a heart attack and died. Several years later his Dad told Dave  he could sell all the trees and keep the money. Well, Dave knew everybody and in no time at all had a sold a bunch of oaks to a developer.  Of course by this time the trees were hitting 15' and the fields were full of weeds and volunteer trash trees. Dave didn't have any equipment other than a strong back and a couple of shovels so took a guy with him to hand dig and ball half dozen oaks. I was watching his store for him and about 3 he drug back in moaning and groaning. Told me it took them 4 hours to get 2 trees dug up and balled then they were too heavy to get on the trailer so he left them lying and came back to the shop.  Far as I know those trees are still there, probably growing sideways. He did sell the shop a few years later and started driving an air conditioned truck.

[Neilo]

I would trial cut some and get an idea of quality. Particularly how branchey they are internally. Might determine your market.

[Puffergas]

Get a swing saw and saw them right on the ground.

[Ianab]

Interesting challenge.  :-\

I guess the first hurdle is to find out if there is any demand for logs like that in the local area. Rose Gum is a recognised timber species, grown in many places around the world, and commonly processed into flooring and furniture wood, But are there any mills in trucking distance of the site that are interested. That would be the problem locally, where all the mills are set up to process and market pine, so there is little market for unusual species, apart from a few small operators and specialist suppliers. Don't know what the situation is in Nicaragua of course, but that's what you need to find out first. Get a value on the logs and on the sawn lumber and you have something to work with.

Then you can decide it there is enough money in the venture to make it viable. Lack of machinery access is going to hurt the economics. I suspect if you have to piece down trees "arborist" style it's simply going to take too long to extract each tree. If you have the space for some careful directional felling, then limb and buck the logs and get them out with "low impact" means like a tractor and arch or forwarding trailer, it will still be slow, but practical if the logs have value.

Milling on site (swing blade mill) is possible if access is really limited. But again it would be a slow process with that many trees in front of you. I suspect they would be growing faster than you would be cutting them down.  :D And value of the sawn wood is what determines if it's really worth it.

[tule peak timber]

Euc Grandis is a tough wood with interlocking grain that does not dry well. Lots of degrade....I only take it in if it is free . Make sure you have a market before you invest any time/money.
Attached is a pic of a Euc Grandis bar top.  Rob

 

[longtime lurker]

at 25 years old they're only babies, getting there for height but not yet starting to girth out. Plantation grandis is usually a 40 year rotation and thats still immature - 60 years is a good age IMHO in terms of getting some size but limiting heart decay. They will grow into a lump of a tree given a century or two.
They tend to keep the scraggly top on them... if he can live with the shading of his coffee trees as they are it probably wont get much worse as they continue to grow and there'll be a lot more volume and value if they are allowed to grow.

We cut a fair bit of it most years, currently its about 20% of our harvest by volume. Makes a nice floorboard, can get some nice figure on the quartersawn face for cabinet and joinery type applications. Its quite soft as eucalypts go - saws well, inclined to check if not dried with some care but its manageable. I tend to like logs in the 18-36" diameter range in it. any smaller and the recovery drops off due to the width of the sapwood belt and pith loss, plus the inherent spring of any eucalypt. Any bigger and they're too much like hard work to handle.

Google "Red Grandis" to get a handle on what its fetching in the US market - plantation stock ex brazil and argentina is being traded into the states under that name. Juvenile plantation material has a reputation for movement but I suspect thats a combination of poor kiln schedules causing a degree of case hardening and the inherent instability of juvenile woods.

Non plantation stock with some size on it ex "me" sells at a significant premium to that - as in all things you get what you pay for and with age comes colour and grain - thats why I would recommend letting them grow a bit.



 

Big (but not huge) Rose Gum.



 

Nice size to saw Rose gum



 

Rose gum flooring stock - mix of straight and figured material evident



 

Rose Gum cabinet door ex my sample display on the left.

[Neilo]

You will be lucky to get the quality of Lurker's timber. As he said the coffee site is young and plantation grown.

But remember, these were not grown for timber. No idea on stocking, site conditions or history.

Saw or block some to find out what you have in my opinion.

[tule peak timber]

I made the mistake of planting Grandis as a windbreak on my guava plantation a few years back. I soon discovered the trees were stunting the growth of the guavas two rows in from the wind break and also were shedding branches at inconvenient times. Grandis here have the nickname of "widow maker " trees. A great deal were planted in California with the hopes of yielding cheap railroad ties and that sure didn't work out at all with the drying issues inherent. Grandis is very invasive and a disease vector for a class of insects called lerp psyllids here in California. The red gum in Lurkers pics is a very pretty wood and I used this type of wood for my front porch decking with good results. It could be that the quality of your eucalyptus bears looking at . Here in California- not so much.  Rob

[Riwaka]

What happens on other coffee estates when the trees get too big and shade the coffee?
I think it might be wise (unless you are going to Canada for tree falling training and then to Australia to learn the vagaries of felling  large Eucalyptus trees)
to run over a bit of coffee and use a feller buncher
https://youtu.be/QrVhFpWtHfw

[longtime lurker]

I made the mistake of planting Grandis as a windbreak on my guava plantation a few years back. I soon discovered the trees were stunting the growth of the guavas two rows in from the wind break and also were shedding branches at inconvenient times. Grandis here have the nickname of "widow maker " trees. A great deal were planted in California with the hopes of yielding cheap railroad ties and that sure didn't work out at all with the drying issues inherent. Grandis is very invasive and a disease vector for a class of insects called lerp psyllids here in California. The red gum in Lurkers pics is a very pretty wood and I used this type of wood for my front porch decking with good results. It could be that the quality of your eucalyptus bears looking at . Here in California- not so much.  Rob

Are you sure its grandis???
My pictures are all definitelyEucalyptus grandis  aka Rose or Flooded gum.
99.9% of the eucalypts I saw in California (and I've covered a lot of Ca. over the years, Mary lived there a long time and we still got kids there) were Eucalyptus globulus aka Tasmanian Bluegum or Southern Bluegum.
Totally different species - no wonder you're getting degrade issues, that stuff is rubbish.

Red Gum is Eucalyptus camaldulensis - different again, denser the either the above, stronger,  more rot resistant.

Theres about 600 Eucalyptus species, and they have a wide variety of properties and uses.... comes from growing all over a country the size of the US in climates ranging from alpine to arid to tropical. Why they took globulus there in the 1800's over any other sort confounds me - its only plus is fast growth, but other then that its regarded as very inferior here.

[joeyb52]

Thanks for all the replies.

IANAB-
We're not looking to sell the wood locally because there is no market and no money. They do almost all their building with block, poured concrete, or adobe. I'm also not crazy about the idea of milling the wood myself, ideally I'd sell it as sawlogs so I don't run the risk of losing product to inexperience with the drying process. Also, it will add a whole new list of logistics issues such as space for housing the drying wood and investing in machinery to mill efficiently.

LONGTIME LURKER-
Thanks for all the useful information. I will post pics for you to take a look at.

NEILO-
What constitutes something as "plantation grown"? The trees are on a coffee plantation but they have not been cared for as crops, just planted and allowed to grow.

[joeyb52]

 

 



 



 



 

[Puffergas]

You could look in to making charcoal and it's markets.

[Neilo]

Native Eucalypts in wetter sites usually grow close together when young and self thin as they age. This competition for light controls branch development and often gives clear wood for a good height of the tree.

Plantations have a certain number of trees to acre or hectare. How dense depends on products and rotation length. Many plantation Eucalypts are branchey if they were grown for pulp.

Your site is neither of them, although the photos show them fairly close together.

[nativewolf]

I'd be very worried about the competition the Eucs have on that site.  They will absolutely reduce yields due to nutrient uptake, in addition to moisture.  Looks like they could be dropped, at least the ones close to the roads.  In many places in developing nations there is a good charcoal market that that is a great charcoal source so maybe they could be sold to a local charcoal kiln?   Local sawmills may exist that would buy the logs whole for milling or for shipment to China, etc.  Your family in country would be best poised to find a timber buyer.  If you can't find one that to me is an opportunity.  Exporting Euc could be a good business. 

[tule peak timber]

I made the mistake of planting Grandis as a windbreak on my guava plantation a few years back. I soon discovered the trees were stunting the growth of the guavas two rows in from the wind break and also were shedding branches at inconvenient times. Grandis here have the nickname of "widow maker " trees. A great deal were planted in California with the hopes of yielding cheap railroad ties and that sure didn't work out at all with the drying issues inherent. Grandis is very invasive and a disease vector for a class of insects called lerp psyllids here in California. The red gum in Lurkers pics is a very pretty wood and I used this type of wood for my front porch decking with good results. It could be that the quality of your eucalyptus bears looking at . Here in California- not so much.  Rob

Are you sure its grandis???
My pictures are all definitelyEucalyptus grandis  aka Rose or Flooded gum.
99.9% of the eucalypts I saw in California (and I've covered a lot of Ca. over the years, Mary lived there a long time and we still got kids there) were Eucalyptus globulus aka Tasmanian Bluegum or Southern Bluegum.
Totally different species - no wonder you're getting degrade issues, that stuff is rubbish.

Red Gum is Eucalyptus camaldulensis - different again, denser the either the above, stronger,  more rot resistant.

Theres about 600 Eucalyptus species, and they have a wide variety of properties and uses.... comes from growing all over a country the size of the US in climates ranging from alpine to arid to tropical. Why they took globulus there in the 1800's over any other sort confounds me - its only plus is fast growth, but other then that its regarded as very inferior here.

Yes, and I have planted both and sawn both. I've used the wood for truck beds , decking, bartops and tables . There is another eucalyptus that I've used for door thresholds and some tables, eucalyptus sideroxylon. Pic of sideroxylon in my deck today. I've even tried finger-jointing euc's into staves to get flaw free material , all without much success.

 

[longtime lurker]

see here we wouldnt use grandis for things like truck beds or decking - its not considered externally durable or hard wearing enough.

E. sideroxylon is "Mugga" or "Red Ironbark" Now that is considered strong enough/ hard wearing enough/ rot and bug resistant enough for any application. I would greatly appreciate if you could keep careful track of how it saws for you - blade life, blade wander, cut speed, quality of cut, BF an hour compared with other logs of similar size and grade etc etc - because it'd getting up there in the firmer eucalypt bracket and how a thin band performs in that is very much of interest to me.

Interesting that you're having trouble getting length, the only reason I cant pull 100' select grade floorboards out of a lot of the grandis I get is because the mill cant cut that long... they'll be clean from butt to branch. Makes me wonder why.

[tule peak timber]

Euc has been angry ever since they transplanted it here.... :D

[teakwood]

I have been living 8 miles from the Nicaraguan border, in costa rica for 14 years now.  I cant imagine that there is a market in nica for that wood. also its a very poor country so no big mills or woodworkshops around.
also be careful with the measurements, they dont us m3 or boardfeet (or whatever you Americans use). Here the loggers use some weird inch measurement system were they measure the small end with a string to make a square, i still dont get it.

A very good method to get the trees out is with oxes. they are plenty of ox pair owners in those countrys and they work cheap

[joeyb52]

I just want to be clear, our intention was never to sell the logs in Nicaragua. I understand that there is no money to be made in doing that. The idea is to harvest them using the inexpensive labor that already exists on the farm and then to sell in a foreign market (U.S. or China most likely).

I read on the U.S. Forest Service website that they have a Latin America division with foresters who from what I understand will come and give a report and plan for the property. Does anyone have experience using a forestry service like this?

[Riwaka]

It just depends what angle you take.
You might take the agriculutral angle and see what advice is available from an agricultural source - what is best for the coffee.
http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/index/en/?iso3=NIC    (FAO or Ag department, FAO also have a forestry division)

Splitting with camaldelensis.
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/plsept99.htm

David Davies-Colley - Eucqual sawmills (NZ) knows abit about Eucs, working out sawing and drying regimes etc - email is online.

[joeyb52]

Thanks Riwaka! My cousin is the coffee expert and he says the trees need to go so I'll take his word for it. My roll is just fell 'em and sell 'em.