FPC 2025 CP2

FPC 2025 CP2 is a Plantation Forestry project located in the South West region of Western Australia, approximately 65km east-southeast of the regional hub of Manjimup. Registered in July 2025, the project covers a substantial area of 1,359 hectares. The surrounding landscape is a mosaic of state forests, nature reserves (potentially near the Lake Muir complex), and agricultural land primarily used for grazing and broadacre cropping.

The project operates under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative, Plantation Forestry) Methodology Determination 2022. This methodology credits the carbon sequestered by commercial timber plantations. It specifically incentivizes two key activities found in this project: the establishment of new plantation forests on land that has not recently been forested, and the conversion of existing short-rotation plantations (typically harvested quickly for woodchip) into long-rotation plantations (grown for decades to produce sawlogs). By extending the growth period, the trees store carbon for significantly longer, generating Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) alongside sustainable timber products.

Environmentally, this area of the South West experiences a Mediterranean climate with moderate to high rainfall, typically ranging from 600mm to over 900mm annually, which is critical for supporting the softwood (pine) species likely used in this project. The soils in this transition zone, moving east from the heavy Karri loams, are often characterized as gravelly lateritic soils or sandy duplexes. These free-draining soils are well-suited to Pinus radiata plantations, provided they receive adequate moisture.

This project is part of the Forest Products Commission's broader strategy, supported by the Western Australian Government's $350 million Softwood Plantation Investment Program. This initiative aims to address future timber shortages in the housing construction sector by expanding the state's pine estate by tens of thousands of hectares. The project name "CP2" likely designates a specific Carbon Pool or planting cohort within this 2025 investment cycle.