Teak is one of the world’s premier hardwood timbers, rightly famous for its mellow colour, fine grain and durability. It occurs naturally only in India, Burma, Laos and Thailand, and it is naturalized in Java, Indonesia, where it was probably introduced some 400 to 600 years ago. In addition, it has been established throughout tropical Asia, as well as in tropical Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Due to its extreme density Teak is highly prized for its resistance to termite (land-based) and teredo (water-based) activity and as such it is an excellent material for bridge-building and other applications where wood meets water such as docks, quays, piers and floodgates. In house-building teak is particularly well suited for interior and exterior joinery especially in California and Australia where termites pose a significant hazard to domestic dwellings. It is extensively used for garden furniture. Other uses include boat-building, building poles, transmission line poles, fence posts, wallboards, beams, woodwork, boxes, musical instruments, toys, railway sleepers and railcar construction.

Although teak logs harvested from native forests, principally in India and Burma, are major contributors to the global timber trade as well as to domestic markets, the supply of forest logs from these countries is becoming progressively restricted. In Thailand, harvesting of teak, along with other native forest species, has been prohibited since 1989, while in Laos supplies have been severely constrained pending a reassessment of harvest potentials. Thus, in long-established and substantial markets for teak products, such as Thailand, Singapore and China, there is major concern regarding the future supply of teak. Plantations are an important potential source of timber to narrow the growing gap between supply and demand for teak.

Teak plantations have demonstrated good potential and plantation establishment has accelerated over the past 20 years. Today teak ranks among the top five tropical hardwood species in terms of plantation area established worldwide. As demand for plantation-grown teak grows, the private sector has increasingly become involved in plantations.

Planted stands that often consist of single-age monocultures can alleviate logging pressure on natural forest areas. Worldwide, plantations account for less than 5% of global forest area but produce 35% of the annual timber harvest. Growth in plantation area has accelerated, increasing by 2.8 million hectares a year since 2000. By 2020 plantation timber is projected to meet 44% of global demand; this will prove a challenge.

One of teak’s major advantages over other tropical hardwood timber species is the amount of technical information on production and management that is available for the species, as it has been researched and grown across a wide variety of locations and sites. Teak, relative to other species, is easily established in plantations and, because of the enduring global demand for teak-derived products, it has good prospects as a plantation species. These prospects are boosted by the rapidly-developing trend of replacing timber with reconstituted panels. Demand for sliced veneer of teak as a lay-on for reconstituted panels is assured given its value in enhancing the potential for panels to serve as a replacement for timber in a widening variety of applications.

Teak was first introduced outside Asia in Nigeria in 1902, with seed first from India and subsequently from Burma. Planting in what is now eastern Ghana (formerly Togoland) first started around 1905. Teak plantations in Africa are now found in the following locations: Ghana (127,000 ha), Nigeria (70,000 ha), Ivory Coast (52,000 ha), Togo (4,500 ha), Tanzania (3,000 ha) and Sierra Leone. These make up around 4.5% of the world’s teak plantations.

Teak plantation management regimes vary between and within countries, mainly according to site-specific conditions and prevailing markets. Typically, however, it is recommended that initial stocking rates be in the range of 1,600 to 2,500 seedlings per hectare to allow for early mortality rates and to provide an opportunity for selecting the better individuals during thinning operations. Depending on the intensity of planting, an initial thinning takes place as soon as the branches start to make contact with those of surrounding trees thus closing the canopy; this may occur when the plantation is around three to four years old and the intensity of removals may be as high as 25% of the initial stocking. A production thinning may follow at about 8-10 years, and a final production thinning at around 12-14 years. Again, depending on market requirements and other factors, an ideal final stocking is likely to be around 1,600 trees per hectare, or approximately
some 800m 3 of wood. Two major issues that affect the performance and management of Teak plantations are the growth rates achieved and the desirability of maximizing the length of the clear bole (“trunk”) to maximize the value of the log.

It is widely accepted that a major contributing factor to climate change has been deforestation in developing countries. During the third quarter of 2006 a world forum was held in Paris where some of the most respected scientists in this field were invited to present their findings as to the actual position of climate change. The findings were both harsh and decisive: they found that pollution was at the point of becoming both detrimental and irreversible, and that the process of global development by man was the main contributing factor.

Forests have long been regarded as the “lungs” of the planet, and it is known that they act as a filter of the atmosphere taking in harmful pollutants such as carbon monoxide, locking them away in the body of the tree and releasing oxygen. The world’s forests have shrunk by almost a billion hectares in the last 200 years. Over the most recent period of evaluation by the Earth Policy Institute of the UN, between 1990 and 2005 Africa saw the biggest decline in its forests, totalling 64 million hectares. It is estimated that over 80% of the timber cut during this period was destined for the markets of China and the EU. The total area of forest on the planet is now estimated to be less than 4 billion hectares, compared with almost 5 billion hectares at the beginning of the 20th century. This combined with the huge increase in global pollution has resulted in, and will continue to result in, an escalation of the contributing factors for climate change. It is widely
accepted that the demand for timber will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. The only feasible way of reducing pressure on natural forests is to provide an alternative supply of timber through establishing sustainable plantations.