After two years of planning, Australia's oldest woodchip exporter has abandoned its bid to enter the global softwood market.
A glut of softwoods is looming after an infestation of the North American timber beetle in Canada. Vince Phillips from South East Fibre Exports at Eden, in New South Wales, says world prices have been forced 20 per cent below Australian production costs.
"The Canadians have had a massive beetle kill in their softwood forests and they've got millions and millions of dead trees and they've basically dumped them on the pulpwood markets at around 20 per cent below market price and driven the price down to a point where we could not operate at anything but a loss day in and day out and that situation looks like it's going to last five to 10 years," Mr Phillips said