Forest-Based Industry In India

Do you know what forestry is? Forestry is the field and art of creating, directing, managing, planting, utilizing, conserving, and mending forests, woodlands, and linked resources for human and environmental profits. Forestry is exercised in plantations and natural stands. The science of forestry has components that pertain to the physical, biological, social, political, and managerial sciences.

All around the world, there are numerous types of forest-based industries, however, the forest-based industry in India is a rapidly developing industry in the world. The developing expertise base coupled with synergistic contribution from the flagship schemes of the government. Bamboo is the most employed raw material for producing paper in India. 70% of the raw material for the paper industry is acquired from bamboo.

On this page, we will understand the importance of forest-based industry, a list of top forest-based industries, along with interesting facts and information on the forest-based industries.

Importance of Forest-Based Industry - Forest Industry Resources

Forest industry assets encompass trees, logging residues, and processing residues. Timber from forests, plantations, orchards, etc. are the ones harvested particularly for energy, is used for commercial thinning operations. And the unused timber is used to cover forest fires.

Logging residues (additionally known as forest residues) are the substances on account of tree collection/harvesting operations and encompass treetops, twigs, and branches. Processing residues (additionally known as secondary forest residues) are the fine and coarse wood, sawdust, and bark produced during wood processing at sawmills, veneer mills, and furniture and cabinet makers, in addition to black liquor produced at some point of the kraft pulping process.

List of Top Forest-Based Industries In India (Types of Forest-Based Industries)

Below is the list of top forest-based industries:

• Pulp based industry

• Match industry

• Timber and Sawn Wood Industry

• Plywood industry

• Particleboard industry

• Fibreboard industry

• Dendro Biomass Power Generation Industry

• Oil and Biodiesel Industry

• Value Addition Industry

Now, let us discuss these types of forest industries in detail.

Pulp Based Industry

The pulp and paper industry is one of the pioneer industries in India, and it is extraordinarily fragmented. Today, there are approximately seven hundred paper mills in India, with 33 in the huge scale sector. During the 1990s, the per capita consumption of paper was 3.3 kg which has now escalated to eight kg; however, still lower as compared to the worldwide average of 47.7 kg. The cutting-edge production of raw material for pulp and paper production is 2.76 million lots as opposed to the demand of 5.04 million tonnes. The shortfall is as excessive as 45 percent.

The overall hooked up potential of pulp & paper mills in the country is envisioned to be over 7.5 million tons that's possible to boom to 14 million tons by the coming years. In India, paper is manufactured from a wide variety of raw materials like wood, recovered paper, bagasse, and other agro residues. Based on that, the paper mills had been categorized and furnished in the below Fig. a:

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Did you know that currently, the paper industries in the country face serious issues regarding raw materials? Well! It’s because availability has become a major deterrent to the competitiveness and growth of the forest-based industry in India. Therefore, all the Indian industries have started mammoth plantation programs with varying degrees of success.

Major pulpwood species are:

• Bamboo

• Casuarina spp. Food product

• Eucalyptus spp. Food product

• Leucaena spp.

• Acacia spp.

• Populus spp.

Match Industry

In India, the matchwood industry is one of the ancient wood-based industries. Additionally, around 75 %of the entire match wood industries in the country are placed in the Tamil Nadu state, which comprises nearly 6,000 match industries with mechanized, semi-mechanized, and cottage industries. India’s per capita intake of matches improved steadily from 2.45 kg (1970) to 4.25 kg (1987).

The current per capita intake rose to 6.0 kg which is more staggering. The growing call for the matches coupled with declining wood resources is a first-rate bottleneck faced by the entire match industries in India, such as the ancillary splint and veneer industries. There has been a brief fall of 9,00,000 m3 in 2000, while the veneer quality wood for matchboxes accounts for 44 percent of matchwood used and is likewise in short supply.

Major Matchwood Species:

• Ailanthus excelsa

• Albizia falcataria

• Ailanthus triphysa

• Albizia lebbeck

• Anthocephalus cadamba

• Erythrina indica

• Populus spp.

Timber and Sawn Wood Industries

Traditionally, people in the country predominantly use wood and other converted wood in all their domestic and industrial wood requirements. The rapid population growth, urbanization, and industrialization led to extra utilization of wood in furniture, housing, and construction material. During 2010-2012 greater than 500 million square ft of space was expected to be built in urban areas of the nation, and the wood materials had been valued at around US Dollar three billion.

With extra utilization of wood as a predominant material for housing and construction material in urban and semi-urban regions, there's going to be a superb call for timber and other sawn wood requirements. The Indian fixtures marketplace is predicted at eight billion US dollars, and in most instances, raw substances are imported from diverse countries.

Major Timber Species:

• Tectona grandis

• Terminalia spp.

• Albizia spp.

• Gmelina arborea

• Azadirachta indica

• Pterocarpus spp.

• Mangifera indica

•  Artocarpus spp.

• Dalbergia spp.

• Dipterocarpus spp.

• Eugenia spp.

Plywood Industries

In India, one of the fastest developing is the plywood industry. Industrialization and urbanization, and the rising interest in indoor decorations have made great utilization of plywood in the country. A wide variety of species have been found amenable for making a face, core, and inner veneers, leading to more than 2,000 small-scale industries involved in plywood manufacture.

Additionally, the Indian government’s liberalization and privatization policy significantly contributed toward the establishment of new rural industries. These industries additionally rely closely on diverse species, which thereby attracted massive scale promoting of plywood-based business wood plantations.

Major Plywood Species:

• Populus spp.

• Melia dubia

• Paulownia spp.

• Eucalyptus spp.

• Ailanthus spp.

Particle Board Industries

Particleboard is a reinstituted constructional panel especially set up for natural constructional wood and is crafted from low-quality waste woods or from ligneous agricultural remains. These particle boards are mostly used for both wall paneling and interior decorations in the home and business wood sector. In India, the first particleboard industry was set up in the late ’50s at Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh and from then onwards, massive quantities of industries have been mounted throughout the country.

Major Raw Materials:

•  All kinds of wood waste

•  All kinds of pine needles

•  All kinds of Casuarina needles

• Ligneous agriculture residues

Fibre Board Industries

Fibreboard constitutes the utilization of sheet materials of broadly varying diversities manufactured from refined or, in part, refined wood fibers or other vegetable fibers.

Dendro Biomass Power Generation Industries

Biomass is an essential fuel source in the overall energy scenario. Biomass is produced via the chemical storage of solar energy in plants and other organic matter as a result of photosynthesis. This biomass encompasses plantations that produce energy crops, natural vegetable growth, and other natural waste and residues.

Among most of this biomass, the function of dendro biomass could be huge because of their greater calorific value and rising fuel efficiency. Therefore, a massive quantity of dendro biomass-based power plants has been set up throughout the country to generate electricity.

Major Energy Crop:

•  Prosopis spp.

• Acacia spp.

• Albizia spp.

• Dalbergia sissoo

• Leucaena leucocephala

• Casuarina equisetifolia

• Eucalyptus spp.

• Gliricidia spp.

• Caesalpinia spp.

• Chuckrassia spp.

• Other tough woods

Oil and Biodiesel Industries

The significant demand for edible and non-edible oil is constantly on the rise because of industrial and economic development. But there's no concomitant attempt to enhance the manufacturing potential of oilseeds in the country. This led to a big import of almost forty-six in keeping with cents of edible oil till the recent past thus claiming a massive quantity of the country's exchequer. Likewise, the crude oil requirement in the country is likewise growing because of development in the transport and commercial sector.

Till the recent past, the intake of crude oil became approximately 184.68 million tonnes, and the rate of energy intake is growing at the rate of 6.5 percent per annum. India’s percentage of crude oil manufacturing is about one percent of general international crude oil manufacturing at the same time as in consumption; its share is 3.1 percent of total world consumption, which constrains massive imports of crude oil.

The import of crude oil has accelerated from 63 percent in 1971-1980 to nearly about 80 percent in 2007-2008; that’s an alarming difficulty for the country and warrants improvement of alternate renewable resources. Under such circumstances, efforts were taken by diverse departments of the Indian government Government to promote non-edible oilseeds in the country to increase the vegetable oil feedstock to generate biofuel.

Simultaneously a huge number of private sector oil and biodiesel production industries has been mounted throughout the country, and however, for the need of sustainable raw material resource availability, these industries are under notable threat. This facilitated furtherance of tree-borne oilseeds around the country and their incorporation under farm and agroforestry frameworks.

Value Addition Industries

The wood-based industries ought to store the harvested raw materials during the rainy season, have sustainable raw material accessibility, and preserve the commercial process during the lean season. The post-harvest control of huge quantities of industrial wood necessitates proper handling, storage, and utilization, which calls for a systematic intervention in order to lessen post-harvest losses due to biological agents, specifically powder post beetles and pin hollow borers.

These biological agents are taking a heavy toll on stored commercial raw materials, which need to be addressed. Hence huge numbers of wooden seasoning and preservative industries were mounted to avoid post-harvest losses. Likewise, the plantation and industrial processing activities result in 20-30 percent of wood residues which are either unused or underutilized for the need of appropriate recycling technologies.

These plantation and industrial wood residues were effectively value-added into briquettes and as of nowadays many industries have been mounted throughout the country and successful value addition using plantation residues have been observed. Additionally, the following value-added briquettes have acted as tremendous feedstock for the following industries:

• Biomass power generation industry, 

• Boiler industries, and 

• Other industries require biomass to fulfilling the energy demands. 

However, the entire value computation process of plantation residues is described  in the below Fig. 2:

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Forest-Based Industry In India - Facts And Information

• Any industry which relies upon forests for its raw material requirement is taken into consideration to be forest or wood-based industry. India is one of the trailing countries with proliferating wood-based industries, which consist of the following.

1. pulp and paper, 

2. match, 

3. saw wood, 

4. veneer and plywood, 

5. pencil and dendro biomass industries.

• The forest-based industry is developing exponentially with the increasing demand for furniture, housing, construction material, packaging, agriculture goods, sports activities goods, plywood, veneer, matches, etc. Similarly, the biomass primarily based totally electricity era industries are also at the boost throughout the country to generate electricity from forest biomass. This developing call for wood and wood-based industries will create a wood deficit of 20-70 million cubic meters by the coming years.

• It is anticipated that about 40 percent of the forest products are provided from outside forest regions, and more than 95 percent of fuelwood and major wood requirements are acquired from outside forest areas. The forest-based industries rely majorly on forest and agroforestry plantations to fulfill the raw material requirement.

• With only 2 % of the world’s overall forest area and 15 % of its human and cattle population, India faces a critical disequilibrium in its natural resource pool. Half of the country’s legal forest is badly degraded, and deforestation takes place at an alarming rate of 1.5 million hectares per year till the recent past. These have ushered in not only a complete mismatch between supply and demand of both domestic and industrial wood necessities but, additionally results in degradation of the land surface.