Tea tree oil harvest is underway on the Northern Rivers with the market strong and prices above $45 per kilo for distilled oil, gleaned from Melaleuca alternifolia leaf. But tonnage will be down on average with mixed results from the season, depending when coppiced trees were last harvested.
In the case of producer and contract harvester Rodney Rose, Codrington via Lismore, this year’s crop looks to be a near record, with green leaf right to the ground and superb top growth.
“We harvested last year before the June rain event, which was followed by an August East Coast Low so these plants were able to get going before the dry spring set in,” explained Mr Rose who has been in the industry since the mid 1990s and who started with a tractor, slasher and bush garnered tea tree seed.
Crippling dry weather from October through February, with remarkable heat, certainly stressed the crop but heavy rain from March combined with enough warmth in the ground to finish well in the lead up to harvest.
However plantations that were coppiced after last year’s winter storms, and started regrowth in a dry spring, grew poorly. Some plantations suffered worse than others in the floods that followed with plants going right under affected by leaf drop. As a result projected tonnage is about 740 tonne, not great but up 30 tonnes up on last season which was also compromised by a very dry summer, says Australian Tea Tree Industry Association CEO Tony Larkman. Last year’s farm gate value was $29 million.
The niche industry has experienced the school of hard knocks in its time, suffering through a spectacular price crash in the late ’90s when an explosion of production combined with an immature market. Mr Rose remembers it well, planting new paddocks when prices were high but watched potential profits evaporate with oil bottoming out at $11/kg before he cut his first harvest, 18 months after plant establishment.
In fact growing tea tree is not for the faint hearted even in good times, with set up costs including laser leveling and flood irrigation while full oil production does not come on until three years after establishment.
Cloned trees are able to produce mature yields from the first harvest but there are issues with cloned trees, as the Macadamia industry knows, with poor root ball and tap root development.
Typical plantations include 33,000 trees per hectare producing between 15-40t/ha biomass which can yield between 8-11kg oil per tonne of leaf.
R&D levy first a boost for industry
A tea tree research levy will come into effect July 1 for the first time effectively doubling research dollars to $280,000 a year with the Federal Government matching producers dollar-for-dollar.
“Previously we had a voluntary levy of 25c/kg paid at the first point of sale but we didn't enforce it and it wasn't matched as we have now,” said Australian Tea Tree Industry Association CEO Tony Larkman.
“I feel like we've finally grown up as an industry and have shed our schoolboy shorts and put on our grown up pants. We now have assurity of funding.”
As well the industry will now have an emergency plant pest response levy which is currently set at zero but will be enacted when disaster strikes, providing a form of insurance to affected growers paid by industry.
