Siem Bok's green gold: how eucalyptus is reshaping Stung Treng's economy

In Siem Bok district, an industrial eucalyptus plantation illustrates Cambodia's strategy to cut down on processed-timber imports, blending domestic supply-chain building with provincial economic development.

In the laboratory, in-vitro cloning of eucalyptus cuttings before they are moved to the nursery.  — Photo: Hong Menglong / AKP

In Siem Bok district, Stung Treng province, rows of eucalyptus now stretch across several thousand hectares, driven by the plantation activities of Holy Plantation company. Fast-growing by nature, the crop is meeting rising demand from Cambodia's wood-processing industry and fits into a broader push to reduce the country's reliance on natural forest resources.

This approach reflects a strategy Cambodian authorities have pursued for several years: cutting the country's processed-timber import bill and building a domestic industrial forestry sector able to feed local processing plants directly, rather than depending on imported raw timber or wood harvested from natural forest.

An integrated chain, from cutting to plank

Holy Plantation — the new name, following a registration change in late 2023, of the company previously known as Think Biotech (Cambodia) Co Ltd — operates a concession of roughly 34,000 hectares spanning Sambo district in Kratié province and Siem Bok district in Stung Treng province. The project, led by Taiwanese businessman Lu Chu Chang, supplies acacia and eucalyptus timber to the country's processing plants, including its most visible affiliate, Angkor Plywood, based in Kandal.

This vertical integration — planting, harvesting, processing — matches the model the government has sought to encourage for roughly a decade: short rotation cycles, predictable local supply, and a processing industry able to export finished, higher-value goods such as plywood, flooring and furniture rather than raw timber.

Young eucalyptus seedlings in the nursery, ready to be transplanted onto the Siem Bok plots.  — Photo: Hong Menglong / AKP

A boost for the provincial agro-industry

At the scale of Stung Treng, this kind of project fits into a provincial economy already largely built on agriculture and agro-industry, which account for the bulk of local income — provincial authorities cite between $700 million and $800 million in cumulative agricultural revenue over the past five years. Eucalyptus, whose fast growth cycle (five to seven years before the first harvest) makes it a favourite among timber companies, adds to that economic base and draws on local labour for nursery work, planting and maintenance.

For neighbouring communities with underused land, the model typically put forward by plantation operators relies on planting partnerships or seedling-supply contracts — a way to generate supplementary income without requiring upfront capital, an argument regularly made by project promoters to local authorities.

A worker plants a young eucalyptus seedling on a plot within the concession.  — Photo: Hong Menglong / AKP

A timber prized by industry

Eucalyptus owes its popularity with timber companies to a well-established set of qualities. Its fast growth cycle — five to seven years before the first harvest, against several decades for most tropical species — makes it a fast-turnover renewable raw material. Its dense, straight-grained wood peels and slices well, two processes central to plywood and veneer manufacturing; properly dried and treated, it also offers good dimensional stability, which explains its growing popularity in flooring, furniture and construction panels across Southeast Asia.

Environmentally, eucalyptus also adapts well to poor or degraded soils while requiring relatively few inputs compared with other industrial crops — characteristics that make it a preferred species for large-scale plantation programmes across Asia and Latin America.

A resource beyond timber alone

Beyond sawn timber, the Eucalyptus genus is also valued worldwide for its essential oil, extracted by distilling the leaves. That oil owes its properties to eucalyptol (or 1,8-cineole), a compound that can account for 70 to 90 percent of its composition depending on the species and distillation process. The pharmaceutical industry has long used it as a decongestant and expectorant in lozenges, syrups and inhalants for respiratory conditions, thanks to its anti-inflammatory and mildly bronchodilatory properties, and it has also been studied as an antiseptic and natural insect repellent.

This dual role — timber on one side, essential oil on the other — theoretically opens diversification prospects for eucalyptus plantation supply chains, notably toward the pharmaceutical and cosmetics sectors, though no such use has so far been reported on the Siem Bok concession, whose activity remains focused on processing timber.

As with agro-industrial projects elsewhere in this part of the country, the expansion of large-scale plantations of this kind does call for continued attention to the preservation of the surrounding natural forest — a balance between economic development and sustainable resource management that provincial authorities say they are monitoring closely.

Toward export markets

Downstream, demand remains strong: Cambodian plywood and flooring manufacturers are exporting a growing share of their output to Southeast Asia and North America, where plantation-grown eucalyptus and acacia timber is valued as a sustainable alternative to slow-growing tropical species. That external demand gives Cambodian operators an added incentive to secure local supply rather than rely on imported raw timber, notably from neighbouring countries.

For Stung Treng province, historically less industrialised than its neighbours in the Mekong basin, the stakes also involve diversification: beyond rice, cassava or cashew, industrial forestry offers a perennial crop less exposed to annual swings in agricultural prices, and a further foothold in regional timber value chains.