One of Australia’s largest timber mills stands ready to take large volumes of salvaged logs after Wood Central revealed on Wednesday that crews are preparing to extract 10 years’ worth of burnt logs from the HVP Plantations Shelley plantation over the next 10 to 12 months.
“We have been here before, and the team knows what to do. We are part of a whole-of-industry, as well as community, coordinated effort and we will certainly be doing our bit here in Tumba,” Hyne Timber Tumbarumba Site Manager Kristina Kaminski said.
Kaminski said the mill’s experienced workforce is well prepared to handle the surge in fire-affected logs, noting the process involves stripping the burnt bark before converting the timber into quality sawn product for the housing construction sector.
“Once we get the burnt bark off the logs, we can process this into quality, sawn timber for housing construction,” she said. “We very much value the ongoing support of our customers who proudly back Aussie timber first and are very much part of our economic value-add to the Australian economy.”
A mill that has faced fire before — and recovered.
The Tumbarumba Mill is no stranger to bushfire recovery. The 2019–20 Black Summer fires decimated 40 per cent of Hyne’s long-term log supply in the region, triggering a multi-year campaign to secure alternative feedstock and government-backed investment in new infrastructure.
In late 2024, the mill completed a $5 million, 4,700-square-metre storage facility — jointly funded by the Australian and NSW governments — to protect rough-sawn, kiln-dried timber from weather exposure and maximise the value of every log processed on site.
The Tumbarumba facility, which Hyne purchased and redeveloped in 2001, processes approximately 620,000 cubic metres of log annually — the equivalent of around 22,200 timber-framed homes — with zero wastage. All by-products generated are either used as biofuel to power the mill’s heat plant or sold on to customers such as Visy in Tumut.
With more than 200 direct employees and hundreds more supported indirectly through the regional supply chain, the mill remains the single largest employer in the Snowy Valleys — and its readiness to absorb fire-damaged sawlog at scale will be critical to the success of the broader salvage effort now ramping up across the Upper Murray.
- To read Wood Central’s earlier coverage on the broader salvage operation across the Upper Murray, click here.
