Marketing is the process of selling timber to obtain its true fair market value. Achieving a reasonable financial return on a timber investment depends on many factors.

Financial gain main not be your primary goal and a proper marketing can reduce the cost of achieving other management objectives, such as creating wildlife habitat. The owner may have a wide variety of objectives for their woodlands. Harvesting is compatible with most non-financial objectives. Insisting that the logger follow best management practices (BMP’s) will ensure the maintenance of a healthy natural environment.

Logging activities may temporarily reduce aesthetic quality, but this depends on the proportion of the trees removed and the extent to which the tops are removed for firewood or cut up for faster decomposition. Eventually, stumps and openings will be the only evidence of logging activity.

The specific trees selected for harvest determine the following:

• willingness of potential buyers to make an offer to buy your timber
• amount they are willing to pay
• trees left to produce your next crop
• openings for regeneration, wildlife habitat
• aesthetic appearance

The science of forest management is based on the principle that whatever vegetation currently occupies an area of land grows to fully occupy the available growing space. Owners find that felling trees by conducting a commercial harvest or timber stand improvement (TSI) controls the composition of this vegetation.

Green Belt take an inventory to assess the stand of timber and the existing volume within the forest, including the net productive area. This will determine the price an investor is likely to pay for it as it will determine the time to maturity, the clearfell volume that can be expected, any thinning recommendations and the timing of those events.

Biomass Markets

In a major campaign to open up alternative markets for timber, Green Belt has developed a partnerships with renewable energy and biomass companies, who need a consistent commercial supply of woodchip per annum. Green Belt can provide this by harvesting from private estates nationwide.