Products:

Do the Markets Exist?

Oil Mallees are expected to produce at least five products:

Other Opportunities
There is also good potential to use mallee wood as feedstock for panel board products such as medium density fibre board (MDF) and fibre cement composites. These products have sufficiently large market volumes to consume production on the scale that could flow from the Oil Mallee Project.

Mallee could also be converted by fermentation into ethanol and used as a transport fuel. Such uses can now be confidently entertained given the opening of energy markets to competition and the likely imposition of limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Will the markets be large enough?

The Oil Mallee industry is targeting plantings of 500 million mallees over the next 25 years. This volume of mallees will supply:

3.5 million tonnes of biomass sufficient for:

  • 140,000 tonnes of activated carbon

  • 35,000 tonnes eucalyptus oil (<5% of solvent market)

  • 75 MW electricity (<10% of Western Power's forecast 10 year increase)

And could be providing 7-10 million tonnes of carbon below the ground, with the potential for this to double every 10 years.