Promoting large timber plantation at Song Hieu Agricultural Forestry Company

Overcoming difficulties

Present in the acacia forests in Quy Hop district managed by Song Hieu Agricultural Forestry Company Limited, one can see vast green areas, including many large timber forests that are 8-10 years old.

Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Hoang - Chairman of the Board of Members of Song Hieu Agricultural Forestry Company Limited said: Since 2011, the company has identified large timber plantation as a sustainable direction and from that time the unit has developed an implementation plan.

The first difficulty is that the investment cost for planting large timber forests is quite large, while the exploitation cycle is long, so the pressure to pay bank interest is also large. Faced with difficulties and challenges, the company has determined to implement a strategy of planting large timber forests in the form of both 10-12 year cycle forest areas and 6-7 year areas to use short-term to support long-term.

The company's management board determined that in order to effectively grow large timber forests, the quality of seedlings must be improved. The unit cooperated with the Forestry Seedling Institute to test a number of new acacia varieties, and at the same time, switched from planting acacia cuttings of old varieties to acacia tissue culture produced by the company itself.

From 2020 to present, the company has invested in and built 5 new tissue culture nurseries at 5 affiliated forestry farms, with a total cost of nearly 3 billion VND. The company's technical staff has fully mastered tissue culture technology.

The company has selected a set of varieties with outstanding features, suitable for practical conditions, namely AH1, AH7 and BV523. Every year, the company produces 2 million acacia tissue culture trees and 2 million cuttings to supply internal forestation and serve the people. To improve the quality and efficiency of large timber forestation, the company also focuses on implementing good technical measures and investing in intensive farming.

Efficiency of large timber plantation

Song Hieu Forestry and Agriculture One Member Co., Ltd. currently manages over 30,000 hectares of forest, of which natural forest accounts for 23,000 hectares, and the remaining 7,000 hectares are production forests. Although the company's forest land fund has decreased significantly, with a systematic strategy of planting large timber forests, developing in depth, and diversifying products..., production and business activities are very effective. Up to now, the unit has 1,700 hectares of large timber forests, exploiting 100 hectares annually. The company has also invested tens of billions of VND in maintenance and construction of over 250 km of raw material roads to facilitate the process of planting, caring for and exploiting.

The advantage of large timber plantations is that they produce good wood products, with productivity and revenue twice as high as that of raw material plantations. Large timber forests are used for multiple purposes, from sawn timber, laminated timber, to branches and tops used for chipping. On average, each hectare yields 180-200 tons of wood with over 300 million VND/cycle/10 years.

Mr. Ho Duc Dan - Director of Song Hieu Agricultural and Forestry Processing Enterprise said: In recent years, the company has invested 27 billion VND to upgrade and innovate the technology of the steam drying system to replace the heat drying oven. Investing in the innovation of the technology of the manual wood-jointed production line to semi-automatic to create quality products that meet export standards, the company annually produces and consumes 2,700 m³Laminated wood, over 50,000 tons of wood chips. Wood products under the brand name “Song Hieu Agricultural Forestry” are very popular in foreign markets, especially the US market.

In 2024, the unit expects to have revenue of over 120 billion VND, creating stable jobs for over 450 officers, employees, and 1,198 joint venture workers, in association with local households.

The planting of large timber forests by Song Hieu Agricultural Forestry Company Limited not only brings higher economic efficiency than planting small timber forests, but also contributes significantly to protecting the ecological environment, responding to and reducing the harmful effects of climate change, weather, storms and floods which are increasingly complex and unpredictable, especially in mountainous districts where landslides, flash floods and flash floods often occur.