Penola Plantations 2026 – P26-1 Inverell

Penola Plantations 2026 – P26-1 Inverell is a plantation forestry project located approximately 30km east of Penola, situated across the South Australian border within the Glenelg Shire of south-western Victoria. Registered in September 2025, the project covers an area of 135.64 hectares. The project is situated in the heart of the "Green Triangle," a region renowned as Australia's second-largest collective plantation and wood processing zone, where the regional land use is dominated by extensive softwood and hardwood timber plantations, as well as pastoral sheep and cattle grazing.

Plantation forestry projects under the 2022 Methodology Determination typically involve establishing, maintaining, and harvesting commercial timber. The standard requirements mandate that the forest is actively managed for commercial wood products, which includes maintaining specific tree stocking densities, managing rotation cycles, and executing commercial harvesting. This specific project actively sequesters carbon by avoiding the conversion of an existing or previously harvested plantation to non-forested agricultural land (such as grazing pasture), choosing instead to re-establish and maintain a new commercial plantation.

The environment in the Green Triangle is considered to have a reliable, high rainfall climate that makes it exceptionally suitable for commercial forestry operations. The soils in the Glenelg Shire are generally characterized by permeable sandy loams over clay, prominently featuring Tenosols and Chromosols, which successfully support the deep root systems of plantation species like Radiata pine and Blue gum.

An interesting note about this project is its connection to the Green Triangle Forest Operating Sub Trust, which manages expansive forestry assets in the region and is an active member of Forest & Wood Products Australia (FWPA). The proponent, Timberlands Pacific Pty Ltd, operates extensively across this cross-border region, maximizing the carbon storage potential of continuous plantation cycles and supporting the local timber economy rather than allowing the harvested land to permanently revert to pasture.