Acacia mangium - an investor's miracle tree!

Acacia mangium is a miracle tree in terms of fast growth. Since investors don't want to tie their money up indefinitely, a 10 year turn around is only sustainable if the tropical hardwood trees being planted produce rapid results. Acacia mangium lives up to that promise. It can go from zero to a 50 cm (20 inch) diameter bole or trunk in just 9 years. Since wood is sold in cubic meters in much of the world, another way of expressing this increase is in cubic meter growth per hectare (2.47 acres). Acacia mangium can add 35 to 50 cubic meters of wood per year per hectare in a good location, such as the plantation managed by Amazonia Reforestation. A 9 year old tree will be 21 meters of 65.5 feet tall. When planted for pulp and paper purposes Acacia mangium is often harvested after just 6 years of growth, a factor popular with that industry.

Equally important to an investor are the potential markets for a hardwood. The obvious primary use for Acacia mangium is wood. This straight trunk tropical tree is a hardwood with an extensive product range, including sawn or hewn building timbers, heavy construction uses, beams, boat building, containers, crates, boxes, industrial and domestic wood ware, tool handles, brushes, turnery, furniture, cabinets, flooring, decking, veneers, wood based materials like particleboard, fibreboard, medium density fibreboard, wood wool or excelsior, pulp and paper, charcoal and firewood. Acacia mangium’s density and fibre length allows the wood to be sawn, polished, drilled, glued and washed.

Besides its timber value, Acacia mangium's fast growing nature is ideal for carbon sequestration programs like the one offered by CO2 Tropical Trees. As we saw from its significant annual cubic meter growth this means that Acacia mangium can sequester an average of 50 lbs or 22.6 kg of CO2 per tree per year. Since more than 50% of the average tropical tree’s woody biomass is carbon, this is an excellent long term storage solution, as the carbon remains trapped in the wood even after harvest for uses like building material and furniture. Industries like oil and gas requiring carbon offsets, regardless of where they are located, can make use of Acacia mangium’s excellent carbon sequestration properties. Atmospheric carbon is a global problem that can find a significant partial solution with tropical trees like Acacia mangium.