Sustainable Timber Tasmania, formerly Forestry Tasmania, released its annual report on Thursday which detailed an operating profit of $6 million – a $20 million improvement on 2016-17.

The result was attributed to increased wood production volumes, higher pricing of logs, and $4.1 million in savings from a business restructure.

Forestry Minister Guy Barnett said $60 million from the sale of 29,000 hectares of hardwood plantations was not factored into the profit and was instead used to wipe STT’s debt and pay a $15 million dividend to the government.

Total wood production for the year was more than 1.5 million tonnes, including 129,403 cubic metres of high-quality eucalypt sawlogs.

This exceeded the target of 122,166 cubic metres of high-quality logs.

There was 10,233 cubic metres of special species logs harvests, above the projected 8400 cubic metres.

The company harvested 5727 hectares of native forest, also above the target, and 1596 of plantation forest.

Sustainable Timber Tasmania made $144.8 million from revenue sales in the financial year, above $121.5 million in 2016-17.

It received $16.1 million in government funding, above the $11.7 million received in the year before.

The funding was for community service obligations, fire preparedness, and fuel reduction activity.

The company’s entire forest estate was valued at $130.8 million.

As for privately owned forests, harvests increased for the sixth year in a row in Tasmania.

The nine-per-cent increase meant the supply of 4.25 million tonnes of logs.

Private Forests Tasmania chief executive Penny Wells said this was the first time the private forest estate had delivered over 4 million tonnes of logs to the market and was nearly four times larger than the low of 2011-12 of 1.1 million.

The state’s private forest estate is 1.1 million hectares which is one-third of the state’s total forest area.

Of this, 841,000 hectares is native forest and 264,000 hectares is plantation forest.

The private forest estate contributed to 74 per cent of the state’s total wood harvest.

In 2012-13, it contributed 58 per cent.