NZ Logger December 2019 - January 2020

December 2019 / January 2020

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ISSN 1176-0397

nnse NZ ‘s first Po eeled h w g in K n io Scorp sted e t r e t s e v r a h

West Coasters want more native logs

Beaut new billet trucks

contents DECEMBER 2019 – JANUARY 2020

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FOREST TALK AUSTimber 2020 gears up for big crowds; small win for timber export with China-NZ trade deal; new Rotorua Forestry Hub for Te Uru Rākau; foresters preparing for more rural fires like Nelson; wood fibre to unlock low emissions future; WorkSafe: don’t just leave safety to the regulator; Pan Pac says land deal not a “free pass”; WET technology lifts viability of forests; more PGF money to boost East Coast forestry worker numbers; new app simplifies hose selection; help for Otago young people to enter forestry; more wood needed in Southland as biomass conversions increase; sensors keep machines and people apart.

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FORESTTECH 2019 Advances in technology are coming faster each year, making it difficult for foresters to keep up. So the annual ForestTECH conference that rounds off the year in Rotorua has become a ‘must attend’ event to help them keep up with the changes.

SHAW’S WIRE ROPES IRON TEST The first Ponsse 8-wheeled harvester is now road lining and thinning in a Douglas-fir forest in a remote Canterbury alpine location with Thwaites Logging. Is it too big to move around effectively under the canopy?

Our Iron Test team finds out.

NZ TIMBER Our quarterly focus on the New Zealand

44 milling and processing sector returns to the West Coast as the supply of native logs from the cyclone-hit conservation estate dries up, resulting in millers calling on the government to change its policy and allow selective logging.

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BREAKING OUT Billet wood is becoming a value resource in many forests, but the challenge to collect it effectively and economically remains. We cover three very different solutions.

DEPARTMENTS 2 editorial 54 fica 56 top spot 58 new iron 60 classifieds December 2019/January 2020 | NZ LOGGER 1

from the editor

December 2019 / January 2020

The ups and downs of forestry

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ISSN 1176-0397

PHOTO: JOHN ELLEGARD

nse NZ ‘s first Pon g wheeled Scorpion Kin ted harvester tes

West Coasters want more native logs

Beaut new billet trucks

I The first Ponnse Scorpion King wheelharvester working in a remote Canterbury forest.

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2 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

F YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’VE BEEN RIDING A ROLLER COASTER OVER THE past year, it’s not an illusion.

Forestry has always had its ups and downs, but in 2019 it’s felt like we’ve been on a much bigger fun fare ride than normal. Except that there wasn’t much fun in the ride.

In case you’ve forgotten what we went through, here’s a reminder: • The devastating forest fire in Nelson’s Pigeon Valley in February – our largest for years • Industry-wide shortages of labour, particularly in silviculture as the planting season began • The dramatic drop in export log prices in July • Big lay-offs among woodlot logging crews resulting from the price drop which, ironically, meant we had a temporary surplus of workers but, more ominously, many have exited the industry for good so future manpower shortages will worsen • Increased competition for our export logs from bug-hit forests in Europe, which helped spark the price drop • The ongoing train wreck that is the US/China trade war, which also contributed to the price drop • Depreciation of the NZ dollar, which is a double-edged sword because although it makes our log and timber exports more attractive it increases the cost of imported forestry and mill equipment • Spike in forestry fatalities, largely from a single vehicle crash in Kaingaroa that killed four young workers • And finally, attacks from our agricultural neighbours, upset over farms going into forests.

Forestry has never been easy, but it seems like it has been more of a challenge than in the past. Yet there have been some bright spots.

The One Billion Trees programme promised by Shane Jones has actually got into gear and we’re seeing more trees going into the ground. Admittedly, a large proportion are natives, not plantation pines, but any new trees is a good thing.

Carbon prices are at the highest levels ever and the changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme will support this secondary level of income for forest owners in the future. That’s a good thing – although it could do with some more tweaks to make it even better – but farmers should be looking at how they can benefit from this trend and working with foresters, instead of bleating about ‘foreigners’ turning rural communities into ‘tree covered wastelands’.

And export log prices have crept back towards sustainable levels, bringing woodlot owners back into a harvesting frame of mind. I just hope there are enough woodlot contractors who have survived the lean times to be able to answer the call.

With the summer break fast approaching, it’s good to finish the year with those more optimistic thoughts. We cannot guarantee what will happen in 2020, so put that aside for now and enjoy your break. NZL

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forest talk

Small win for timber export with China-NZ trade deal IT’S A SMALL WIN BUT BETTER THAN NOTHING, SAYS THE forestry industry of the tariff concessions won in the revised free trade deal with China.

“I know that this has been a very hard-won battle that will see $2 million of savings on 15 export product lines in a $36 million annual trade,” says Brian Stanley, Wood Processors & Manufacturers Association Chair, thanking the Prime Minister, Trade Minister and Forestry Minister, along with MFAT trade officials for pushing the case for NZ’s wood industry to the top of the agenda in the recent FTA negotiations.

“Whilst these may not be huge figures in terms of the overall export of NZ wood products to the world the fact remains that NZ was able to make significant inroads on market access where initially there was no go.”

As tariffs tumble, Mr Stanley urges the government to now turn its attention to defeating other insidious trade barriers, particularly overseas manufacturing subsidies. “These continue to proliferate around the world, give unfair advantage to our competitors and stifle investment here.

“I’m sure if we confront these with the same skill and mettle displayed in our fight against tariff barriers then this can only further benefit NZ’s wood manufacturing sector together with the jobs and communities it supports,” concludes Mr Stanley.

NZ Forest Owners Association Chief Executive, David Rhodes,

agrees that Trade Minister, David Parker, has done a great job of removing many of the remaining obstacles for the processed timber export trade into China.

“Our industry is hugely reliant on China,” says Mr Rhodes. “Our processed timber exports there are worth $509 million a year, but that value could be a whole lot more, if it were not for those residual tariffs discouraging exporters.

“While the tariff removal on current exports is relatively small, it’s the potential for growth without the tariffs which is significant.

“Two of our next two major export markets, Australia and Japan, are dominated by further processed exports. Paper and paperboard for Australia and wood panels for Japan.

“It would be some time before China becomes a similar market for us, but the Chinese government has given a clear signal to New Zealand that it has no issue with processors in New Zealand expanding their exports to China and adding another 12 categories to the 48 already under reduction under the original 2008 FTA Agreement.

“We’d like to see tariffs taken off the final one percent of the export trade, but I’m sure the momentum is in that direction and it is only a matter of time before all the tariffs are gone.

“More processing in New Zealand will create more jobs and give processors more confidence they have market access with fewer tariffs.” NZL

AUSTimber 2020 gears up for big crowds THE BIGGEST FORESTRY SHOW IN Australasia has made key changes to the event to provide a better spectacle for the thousands of visitors who will travel to AUSTimber 2020 next April.

The show will again be based at the HVP plantation just outside the eastern Victorian town of Traralgon, in the forestry region of Gippsland, about two hours’ drive from Melbourne.

But organisers have decided on a new layout that will enhance the experience for the thousands of visitors expected to attend next year’s event.

The revised site plan will see a new central activity area created between the pine and eucalypt live demonstration areas, with one site used for all expo and demonstration days.

At the last event, in 2016, two sites were used – one in the forest and the other in Traralgon, which did not work well for visitors

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who had to travel between the two.

Organisers say that bringing everything together at a single location will create a more vibrant atmosphere and make it easier for visitors to experience the whole event.

In-forest live demonstrations of harvesting and other equipment will still form a major part of the show, with visitors able to view working machines via a walking track through the forested areas next to the main exhibits.

Around 110 exhibitors are expected to display their wares at AUSTimber 2020, which begins with a week of activities running from Monday March 30 through to the show itself on Friday April 3 and Saturday April 4.

AUSTimber is held every four years and this is the second event to be held in Gippsland – previously it was held at Mt Gambier in the so-called Golden Triangle in South Australia.

It is among the largest held in the southern hemisphere and the only one in this region

following the demise of the New Zealand event.

Show coordinator, Dionne Olsen, describes AUSTimber as a unique event, saying: “This is the only expo in the world with pine and eucalypt demonstrations for both soft and hardwoods. You usually don’t get a combination of both.”

Gippsland itself is a major centre for forestry in Australia, with regional Victoria directly employing more than 21,000 workers and indirectly supporting another 40,000 to 50,000 jobs across the state.

AUSTimber attracts a large contingent of visitors from the New Zealand industry – as well as manufacturers from this side of the Tasman – and those who are interested in attending the 2020 event are being advised to organise their accommodation early to avoid disappointment. For more information, see the www.austimber.org.au website. NZL

forest talk

An artist’s impression of the new Forestry hub building in Rotorua.

New Rotorua forestry hub for Te Uru Rākau A BRAND NEW FORESTRY HUB IS TO be built for Te Uru Rākau in Rotorua, to replace the temporary accommodation currently shared with Scion.

Forestry Minister, Shane Jones, announced the plan to upgrade the regional presence of Te Uru Rākau (Forestry New Zealand) last month.

Speaking at a blessing ceremony at the site of the new building, which will be housed within Scion’s Rotorua campus, Mr Jones says the new Forestry Hub will be shared with the Department of Conservation. It will house around 50 Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) staff, with 25 of those from Te Uru Rākau.

“In order for us to strengthen and grow the New Zealand forestry sector, it is important that we build a strong and dedicated regional presence, as was outlined in the Coalition Agreement,” says Mr Jones.

Te Uru Rākau is currently scaling up to support the delivery of the government’s forestry goals, particularly those under the

One Billion Trees programme.

Mr Jones says the current office on the Scion campus has been assessed as no longer fit for purpose and an alternative solution was required to accommodate the growing number of regional staff.

He adds: “The purpose-built facility will be constructed with sustainable construction techniques, including using New Zealand grown timber for both the structural and visible parts of the building.

“A new build provides an opportunity to demonstrate the value of wood for building and will showcase the opportunity to use timber grown and manufactured in New Zealand more extensively.

“Using New Zealand-engineered timber will deliver a range of benefits – social, environmental and regional – and see the creation of jobs and renewed investment in forestry, processing, manufacturing, construction, and prefabrication.

“This ties in nicely with the Rotorua Lakes District Council’s Wood First policy which encourages the use of wood products to

support the district’s vital wood industry.

So we’re right at home here.”

The Forestry Hub will be built from a combination of engineered timber columns, posts, portals and trusses, and the external envelope will feature a selection of timber elements that will mimic the surrounding natural environment.

Aside from its natural beauty, engineered timber provides a very strong, low carbon alternative to steel and concrete. It is also relatively light and has outstanding earthquake and fire resilience.

Mr Jones goes on to say: “As well as demonstrating the versatility of wood, this new building will cement Te Uru Rākau’s important relationship with Scion.

“Scion Campus has been identified as a good location for the new build. Staff will be able to enjoy the facilities this campus offers and collaborate with the wider Scion team and their Department of Conservation colleagues.”

The building is expected to be completed by late 2020. NZL

December 2019/January 2020 | NZ LOGGER 5

forest talk

Controlled tests setting dry stubble alight in paddocks in the South Island are being used to prove the new wildfire convection theory to better understand how wildfires spread.

Foresters preparing for more rural fires like Nelson THE RECENTLY RELEASED REPORT ON THE DISASTROUS NELSON fires in February have underlined the need for more preparation and more action, according to foresters.

Whilst agreeing with the recommendations in the review, foresters say there’s nothing in the report that hasn’t been said before and implementation is overdue.

The Chair of the joint Farm Forestry and Forest Owners Association Fire Committee, Sean McBride says the fire report is comprehensive and his associations look forward to helping Fire and Emergency New Zealand with their implementation.

“The report’s main message is that we can expect more such fires.

It is a warning for all rural communities,” he says.

“It’s alarming to read in the report that so many people interviewed about the fire think it was a freak one and won’t happen again. That’s not the case. Climate change means the fire threat is increasing, dramatically in some areas.”

He says most forest fires start outside the forests and then invade them: “The Tasman fires started when farmland was being cultivated in Pigeon Valley and then spread into forest.

“Forest harvesting crews in the area had stopped working because they were following the Forest Fire Risk Management Guidelines, which showed the fire risk was too high to continue working. There needs to be a lesson taken from that.”

Mr McBride welcomes the report recommendation for guidelines and requirements on heat and spark activities for work outside forests but says that doesn’t go far enough.

“We want to work with FENZ on some of the technology they are

looking at which can provide real-time and precise fire warnings to anyone who is working in or visiting the rural environment,” he says.

“The technology of apps and GPS, combined with sophisticated weather information, means a scale of warning activities can be delivered to anyone in the field with a smartphone. It’s obviously not the whole answer to fire preparedness and avoidance, such as not parking vehicles on long dry grass, but it is an easy way to get information of increasing risk throughout a working day to people who don’t have those monitoring tools themselves.”

Scientists at Scion are currently working on ‘real-time tools’ that can help predict the behaviour of wildfires and assist fire fighters in their response, including the detection of where hotspots might flare up. They will also help predict where smoke from the fires will cause major issues for resident and key installations, such as airports. These tools will use a combination of satellite imagery, drones, ground observations and computer modelling. It is hoped that these tools will be available for users to view on a specially created webpage.

Meanwhile, research funded through the Forest Growers levy fund is continuing on the role played by convective heat transfer in major wildfires. It’s a new theory that suggests fire is spread via convection that pulses the heat forward, rather than radiation, which heats the fuel to the point of combustion.

Field trials have been held in the South Island to test this theory and the results appear to support it. Understanding how wildfires behave in a variety of environments and situations will help with fighting them in the future. NZL

6 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

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forest talk

WorkSafe: Don’t just leave safety to the regulator AFTER A YEAR OF FOCUSING ON KEY ISSUES, such as hauler guarding and dangerous machinery, WorkSafe is pleased with how the forestry industry has reacted, but says more still needs to be done.

Grant Duffy, Engagement Lead Forestry, WorkSafe, explains that despite the general improvement in the industry’s health and safety performance, serious harm rates remain too high. He says that for further improvement, we need to move beyond the prevailing mindset of relying on rules, training and supervision to one where the work and safety systems prioritise safety.

“No-one would think it’s okay for a metal press, or guillotine in a metal workshop, or rollers in a paper mill or debarkers or saws on a super skid to use yellow paint, signs or rules as the primary protection for workers. We would expect lockout or interlock systems or systems to ensure it isn’t possible to be caught or injured. It’s time that forestry adopted the same mindset,” says Mr Duffy.

“We know that forestry workers are good at creating work-arounds, being careful and following rules – however this is not acceptable as a first line of defence against being seriously hurt or killed because something that could be done to protect them wasn’t.”

The Health and Safety at Work Act requires businesses to do all that is reasonably practicable to ensure their workers are able to operate in a healthy and safe environment and it’s important that business keep up to date with what is reasonably practical today and not simply rely

on past practices.

“We have seen instances of existing guarding being removed and not replaced,” adds Mr Duffy.

“We are also concerned that in some cases, there is no protection against having a hand, limb or in some cases a person being caught in moving parts, where it would be reasonable and practical to put those protections in place. These occurrences are simply an invitation to injury and are so easy to avoid.”

On the plus side, 77 notices have been adhered to, which indicates that the guarding failures identified can be rectified. Advances in the sector too, offer promise in terms of innovation, technology and automation, he says.

“Companies committed to elimination and to introducing innovative technology are less likely to face injuries to their workers. The benefits of using innovative technology were discussed (in a recent issue of NZ Logger) by Professor Rien Visser – we support his conclusions,” says Mr Duffy.

“All through the supply chain, every participant should be considering how their work is impacting on those above and below them in the sector and determining what they can do to improve health and safety outcomes.”

The consequences of ignoring this advice can be devastating, from serious amputations to death, warns Mr Duffy: “The issue is not necessarily the appropriateness of the equipment though. It is also about how that equipment is being used and the safe systems of work surrounding each piece.”

For example, a machine bunching trees on a

moderate slope may be stable. However, areas with steeper slopes and wet ground conditions may pose harm. Thoughtful planning is essential when selecting the appropriate resources for forestry work, including plant and the people to undertake the work.

Mr Duffy emphasises that the whole supply chain, from boardrooms to bushlines, has an equally important role in protecting forestry workers from injury or death. It cannot be left just to the regulator.

“We have a role and we’ve communicated openly with the industry about our observations and expectations and it’s been a focus of over 100 workplace visits,” he says.

“We accept that we are expecting a change in approach from how some things have been done before, but that’s what is needed to reduce the level of harm in our forests.

“There was some initial resistance but I’m really pleased that with our consistent and reasonable expectations, contractors and forest owners/managers have generally welcomed the opportunities to make their workplaces safer.”

Mr Duffy goes on to say that FISC has played a vital role in increasing awareness of health and safety obligations and opportunities, and has delivered effective, customised programmes that operators can implement. NZL

Wood fibre to unlock low emissions future PLANS TO RESEARCH INNOVATIVE WAYS TO USE WOOD FIBRE that will also assist New Zealand to transition to a low emissions economy have been announced by the government.

Te Uru Rākau (Forestry New Zealand), the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Forestry Ministerial Advisory Group have issued a ‘request for proposal’ – worth $250,000-to-$300,000 – seeking a commercially-oriented report on viable opportunities for investment in biobased products and biorefinery processing technology.

These investments must use wood and wood fibre and be internationally competitive.

Announcing the move, Forestry Minister, Shane Jones, says: “We know about the ability of trees to absorb carbon and we’ve invested heavily in rapidly strengthening our forestry estate through initiatives such as the One Billion Trees programme and recent changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme. These forests will act as a carbon sink in the short-to-medium term.

“However, they are also vital to increasing wood and fibre supply over

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the next 20-to-30 years as we position our forestry system, or parts of this system, to manufacture a wide range of products that will help us adapt to climate change and meet our emissions target.

“We know that consumers want alternatives to concrete, steel and plastic.

“In theory, everything that can be made from oil or non-renewable resources can be made from trees. The big question is one of commercial viability and how the big ideas can be made into reality.”

Many countries have examined options for future reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and defined a bioeconomy solution in which forests and forest products play a significant role.

Mr Jones says: “Through this call for research, I’d like to see a report that will identify investible opportunities for the production and manufacturing of high value, wood fibre-based bioproducts that will bring innovation and employment to our regions, and increase on-shore processing of logs.

“I’m excited to see the opportunities that emerge and will help establish forestry as the cornerstone of our future economy.” NZL

forest talk

Pan Pac says land deal not a “free pass” THE BOSS OF PAN PAC FOREST PRODUCTS, Dough Ducker, has hit back at criticism of the fast-track rules that allow the Japanese-owned company to buy land without approval of every purchase by the Overseas Investment Office.

Farmers and other critics claim the deal that gives Pan Pac approval to buy up to 20,000ha of land for forestry through to 2022, with a maximum of 25 transactions without specific OIO approval for each purchase amounts to a “free pass” to skirt strict foreign land purchasing rules.

But Mr Ducker has hit back, saying: “We do not in any way shape or form get a free pass on the purchases.”

He says that while the “standing consent” eliminates the need to make every purchase conditional on OIO approval, the conditions placed on them are more stringent than those traditionally required “and we have to demonstrate to OIO we are meeting those conditions”.

Mr Ducker goes on to say his company was granted the standing consent based on its long, successful history in NZ with a proven track record for forest management and processing.

“It is not rape and pillage. That’s something the minister was trying to eliminate,” he adds.

Currently Pan Pac manages 35,000 hectares of its own forests in Hawkes Bay and also

accepts wood from other forest owners in the region to supply its mill at Whirinaki but has struggled to obtain enough wood on occasions. That has led Pan Pac to look to buy additional existing forests or bare land to plant more trees.

The standing consent condition was introduced by the current government to facilitate more tree planting under the One Billion Trees programme.

Meanwhile, calls from farming lobbyists to rein in the sale of agricultural land to foreign buyers for planting forests hit a new crescendo last month with a march on parliament to demand action.

They didn’t get much joy from Forestry Minister Shane Jones, who dismissed them as “rednecks”, but Agriculture Minister, Damien O’Connor, was more sympathetic. However, he says farmers have nothing to fear.

“Much of what’s circulating is based on misinformation,” says Mr O’Connor.

“We have 12.1 million hectares of farmland in this country and 1.7 million hectares of forestry. Under the One Billion Trees target, the amount of forestry land would increase to 2 million hectares by 2028 and help us meet our climate change objectives. We had 2 million hectares of forest land in 2002; this would be a gradual redistribution that brings us back to that.

SOMETHING’S OUT THERE

Doug Ducker, Managing Director of Pan Pac Forest Products.

“There is no Government policy that encourages high-value pastoral land to be planted in pine trees and there is no evidence of this happening.

“The latest Overseas Investment Office statistics show about 8800 hectares of farmland has been converted to forestry under the new special benefits test — that’s one thousandth of New Zealand’s total sheep and beef land.

“The Government is not subsidising whole farm conversions or allowing foreign carbon speculators to buy up farms and plant permanent forests for carbon credits. The streamlined rules for offshore investors only apply to production forests, so talk that the rules are being gamed by offshore carbon speculators is wrong.” NZL

forest talk Left: WET Chief Executive Shaun Bosson and Callaghan Innovation’s Team Leader Electrical Engineering, Ivo Gorny, in the WET factory.

Below: The high-tech process at the WET plant in Gisborne is already producing engineering wood for the local market.

WET technology lifts viability of plantation forestry A GISBORNE WOOD BUSINESS HAS perfected a way to turn exported low grade wood into valuable building materials for the domestic market while offering new status to forests well away from ports.

Tony Johnston, co-founder, shareholder and executive Director of WET Ltd and Director of WET Gisborne Ltd, explains: “The project was developed to produce a more effective wooden building material and more efficiently utilise the NZ Radiata Pine plantation resource so that a higher performing product could be made with much higher productivity.”

The nature of the WET technology allows it to be located beside remote forests because it is relatively small in size and can operate without access to regular energy reticulation systems such as electricity and gas, because it creates its own power.

And it adds significant value to any and all logs compared to exporting them, pulping them or just leaving them on the cut over, effectively “rescuing” the economic viability of forests grown a long way from an export port, says Mr Johnston.

He adds: “Currently we see those somewhat stranded forests go in and out of being logged as the wharf price for logs goes up and down, while the high cost of transporting logs long distances remains unchanged, whereas the steady price for structural engineered lumber products would allow such forests to stay in production continuously. That’s good for loggers and the communities in those regions and, of course, the forest owners.

“It is also less likely that lower value logs

10 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

would be left on the cut over to perhaps be washed down the rivers as those less valued logs for export will be valuable for a WET processing plant and will get processed into building materials.”

The approach and technology underpinning WET’s innovation fits under the broad umbrella of ’Industry 4.0’, which uses interconnected sensors, artificial intelligence and robotics to digitise manufacturing for greater productivity and better products.

Mr Johnston says the result is a general benefit to all participants in the tree-to-house supply chain, in that the process allows a much more efficient use of the stems harvested, turning them all into high value products for New Zealanders to use in making good homes.

“The logs aren’t lost to overseas low value applications, but rather create jobs and build structures for New Zealanders to live and work in. A lot more New Zealanders benefit from the output of our excellent plantation forests and the high quality logs we can get from these forests,” he says.

This data-driven end-to-end automation process partners with a patented method of creating glue-laminated timber, or ‘glulam’, which consists of pieces of wood stuck together with a moisture-resistant adhesive.

The result is Optimised Engineered Lumber or OEL™. It is the optimisation of the disassembly and reassembly process that gives WET its innovation edge.

“WET’s industrial process exploits the variability within each log as well as the grade, or quality of the log, which is broken

down and then reengineered as lumber,” says Mr Johnston.

“OEL™ has a higher modulus of elasticity (MOE) than any conventional or engineered lumber product made from Radiata pine. Plus nearly any log over 25cm small end diameter and even from a tree over 13-years-old has a 100% output of OEL™ with greater than SG8 grade equivalent.

“OEL™ will enable better homes and buildings to be designed and constructed more efficiently.”

He says so far OEL™ has been enthusiastically received by customers and WET is currently raising capital to build the second production line to be started in 2020.

The Wet Gisborne Ltd (WGL) first production line, located in Gisborne, is already operating and all OEL™ output is being sold into the building industry supply chain, generating to date a high level of customer satisfaction, according to Mr Johnston.

“As production is deliberately limited while the start-up is occurring, the current output is being placed with specific customers. None of the current OEL™ production is finding its way into retail sales outlets as yet,” he adds.

Production capacity will rise in 2020 when the existing line is moved onto a 24-hour, 7-day schedule.

WET NZ Ltd Chief Executive, Shaun Bosson, says Callaghan Innovation’s support – in the form of a Growth Grant, a Student Grant that allowed WET to employ a masters student and a software health check through the Build for Speed programme – has been integral to the company’s success. NZL

forest talk

More PGF money to boost East Coast forestry worker numbers MORE MONEY IS BEING PUMPED INTO forestry projects around the Tairawhiti-Gisborne region from the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) for employment and skills and training initiatives.

Projects that will benefit from the funding include the Kuru Contracting Workforce Development Project and the Eastland Wood Council’s Tairāwhiti Road Transport and Generation programmes.

Kuru Contracting’s Workforce Development Project will receive $736,000 through Te Ara Mahi. This funding will enable it to train 27 new employees and upskill 50 staff members in these sectors.

Operations manager, Ma Parata, says the focus will be on upskilling current workers, building capacity of new workers and bringing school leavers into the industry.

“This funding is important to the region because it’s suffering from a lack of skilled workers in the industry, which goes across all industries we work in,” he says.

“There is a shortage of skilled workers across the board. As a result, in the East coast logging region we find ourselves bidding for workers in the same pool instead of bringing in new people.”

Mr Parata adds that it’s about balancing crews with some experience and with those who are new. “In addition, we are building the capabilities of our current workers with internal role changes, making them more versatile and

SOMETHING

employable.”

He says Kuru Contracting currently has four school leavers training as log makers and progressing onto the skid: “We are thankful for the funding as, although we were doing this anyway, it allows for greater flexibility and helps us achieve our goals. The funding also allows us to carry experienced workers surplus to crew requirements to allow for some personal oneon-one training.”

Eastland Wood Council’s Tairāwhiti Road Transport Programme (TRTP), Recruitment and Training Project will receive $999,000 and its Generation Programme, $90,000.

The Wood Council’s Kim Holland says Eastland Wood Council has taken the initiative with the Generation and Road Transport programmes because there is such a shortage of skilled people going into the industry, especially for truck driving.

“The TRTP was established in 2018 to address the identified need and future demand for heavy truck drivers and heavy equipment operators with a structured regionwide programme of recruitment, training and employment placement,” she says.

“The funding enables us to scale up and accelerate the programme. It will attract, train and upskill, and retain licenced Class 2, Class 4 and 5 truck drivers for the local road freight transport, forestry, horticulture and agriculture industries. The expanded TRTP will train/upskill

BIG

and place into employment 78 drivers over the next 2 years (34 per year) for Tairāwhiti employers.”

She explains that this ensures a pipeline of trained truck drivers coming through the licence classes, particularly for logging cartage, as drivers need to be experienced class 5 licence holders, which requires time behind the wheel.

Ms Holland emphasises that the focus is on working collaboratively with local driver training providers and companies that are employing these drivers across industries and sectors including agriculture, horticulture and roading infrastructure.

As to the Generation programme, she says this was a response by the industry to address the skill and training needs they wanted, adding: “It’s leading edge in terms of vocational and educational training and is very much a wraparound programme.

“It provides a lot of support for trainees and contractors to ensure people are employed and stay employed in the industry. We are attracting a really strong calibre of recruitees into the industry. It’s really exciting.”

She says the funding will enable the Wood Council to continue to run three further cohorts of trainees in the current financial year: “We currently have our 4th Generation of 14 trainees underway, and they are all keen and enthusiastic.” NZL

forest talk

The new BOAhub has been introduced to help contractors select and manage their hose repairs and maintenance through an online app.

New app simplifies hydraulic hose build A NEW SMART PHONE, TABLET AND WEB app that helps forestry contractors select the right hoses and fittings to repair and maintain their hydraulic hoses in the bush has been launched by BOA Hydraulics.

Brothers Simon and Greg Boakes, founders of BOA Hydraulics, have for the past five years been providing contractors with the ability to repair and maintain their own hydraulic hoses on-site, using cutting and crimping machines combined with hose and fittings, in a workshop or container set-up.

They recently introduced the BOApod, a complete mobile hose repair facility built into a trailer unit to provide everything a contractor needs to get machines back up and running.

Now they have followed it up with the BOAhub, which is described as a truly multiplatform, multi device application that allows contractors to select and build their own hoses, order hydraulic hoses and fittings online, and accurately manage their inventory to assist with asset management. It is available on both Apple and Android platforms.

A key feature of the BOAhub is the innovative ‘hosemaker’ page that guides the user through selecting their ideal hose type, hose group and hose diameter. With the right hose selected, the user is guided through the correct fitting choice by selecting the angle required. They then measure the thread physically with veneers to obtain the correct internal diameter measurement, which leads to selecting a fitting from a list of available threads, intelligently filtered to fit the hose

12 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

being built.

There’s a ‘help’ feature that makes sure the angles of the fittings are correct and as the hose is designed, the user creates a database of hose recipes, which reduces time when a similar hose blows. It also contributes to making preventative maintenance easy.

Another great feature of the BOAhub app is the mobile ‘scan to order’. Every BOAhub setup has labelled bins, which means the user can reorder inventory and add parts to hose assemblies by scanning the labels. All key

features work offline and update as soon as you are back in coverage.

BOA Hydraulics says this is just the first part of the BOAhub application. The next phase will offer innovative features such as the ability to match a hose assembly against an asset, along with an intelligent system of overlaying your asset images with a key that hose recipes can be matched too.

Very useful in building a helpful database of asset recipes locked against a specific make and model. NZL

Easy to navigate pages and helpful guides are a key feature of the new BOAhub app.

forest talk

Sensors keep machines and people apart ACCORDING TO STATS NZ, THE FORESTRY industry currently accounts for 13 out of every 100 deaths in the NZ workplace.

Workplace injuries caused by moving plant, such as excavators, skidders and forklifts were 12% higher in June than the entire 2018, says ACC and workplace injuries cost the Kiwi taxpayer $18.6m every year.

Now, a new comprehensive workplace traffic management system, SafeSense, promises to significantly reduce everyday risks of injury and it could work in forestry.

Designed to protect workers from moving plant and equipment, SafeSense CEO, Shawn van Zyl, says: “With SafeSense implemented in moving plant, we can eliminate most, if not all moving plant-to-person incidents. Our product is unique as we can programme the receiver to fit the clients’ site and working conditions. SafeSense has a range of 1m-to35m and works through cinderblock walls.”

SafeSense is a real-time proximity warning and alert system with a tag-based radio frequency identification (RFID) transponder.

It was developed in compliance with global requirements for proximity warning systems.

“We have tested our receiver on a wide range of moving plant from diggers to excavators, diesel, electric and gas forklifts.

It works on vehicles with 12v to 70v battery

Safe Sense being used to ensure visitors to this construction site form part of the business’ safety culture and could work in a similar way for forestry. output,” says Mr van Zyl. As the world’s first modular workplace traffic management system, it includes realtime response with a data logger to record event history (optional). SafeSense uses high power receivers and antenna to achieve the necessary range and distance detection and includes several connectivity options. Active RFID-based control unit and transponder tags operate and detect intrusions metres around a 360-degree perimeter.

“We also have the ability to add video cameras to vehicles to ensure even safer operations, ensuring operators can see behind them on a 170˚ view on a 7” waterproof monitor,” adds Mr van Zyl. “Our SafeSense RFID tag is powered by a lithium-ion battery that will last two-to-four weeks (depending on activity).”

In addition, a light and siren in the cab sound audible and visual alarms if a worker is

too close for safe operating of moving plant.

The RFID Tag vibrates on the user, notifying them as well that they are too close. As soon as they move to a safer distance the alarm stops and operations can continue.

“One of our clients says their site visitors can now form part of their safety culture without too much hassle. The same can be said for truck drivers that visit the site and new or temporary employees,” says Mr van Zyl. “With Safesense, business owners and PCBU’s can now enjoy peace of mind that they have technology on hand that will help reduce and even eliminate incidents and they can send their staff home safely.”

The system complements existing Health and Safety management procedures and allows for event recording, incident response, training, visitor safety and incident management. NZL

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forest talk

By Jim Childerstone

More wood needed in Southland as biomass conversions increase DEMAND FOR WOOD RESIDUES IN Southland will increase as biomass continues to replace coal as a prime source of heat energy.

Venture Southland reports that to date 32 wood chip boilers have replaced coal fired systems throughout the province. Three more are planned, including Denone Nutrient’s milk treatment plant south of Balclutha, which is getting a 14 megaWatt boiler.

Among others getting on board with biomass are the Invercargill Aqua Centre, manufacturers, engineering plants, schools, rest homes and tertiary institutions.

New installations since the 2017 Southland Energy Hub conference include Parata Resthome in East Gore, Ruru School, Mossburn Primary, McCallums Dry Cleaning (second boiler), Spark Energy (dryer and boiler), Ascot Community School, Lumsden and Wallacetown schools, Firdland College, Te Anau School and Wavely Park Primary School. These heating units vary from several hundred kiloWatt capacity to multi-megaWatts of heat energy.

Most boilers are manufactured in Europe, except for those made by Morrow Engineering of Christchurch.

Besides mobile chippers that produce biomass from shelter belts and small woodlots, the bulk of chip fuels are supplied from sawmills.

Niagara Sawmill currently supplies 20 clients in the greater Southland / Otago region, while Findlater Sawmill supplies chip to a few clients, mostly schools within the western Southland region and has since developed a briquette plant at the mill initially for its own use.

Niagara’s Sales Account Manager, Simon Knight, estimates the company supplies

approximately 24,000m³ of wood chip annually for heat energy. The rest goes to the Daiken MDF plant at Mataura.

Simon says there is more volume available from its two-and-a-half year old chipping and pelleting plant at the mill: “We are confident we can meet the demand of the market currently, and as our business grows.

“Generally, I have found an increase in wood fuel interest in the last 12 months. I think this will grow as the cost of coal rises and pressure comes from government to change (to low emission alternatives).”

Lignite coal is currently the cheapest source of heating energy, however Pioneer Energy’s Richard Ireland, Alexandra, suppliers of chip fuel to Otago clients, says biomass costs in kiloWatt hours can be as low as 4.5 cents /kwh, dependent on proximity of plant and boilers to fuel source.

Invercargill Aqua Centre’s (Splash Palace) newly installed Binder Boiler includes added cost savings due to low maintenance and disposal of ash as a fertiliser mix, mitigating coal residue costs sent to landfill.

Venture Southland states that a number of businesses are investigating bio-fuels as an alternative to their coal operations as part of alternative business models that incorporate biomass.

The big questions are the availability of wood biomass, and possible bigger capacity boilers in future development.

Research undertaken by Dunedin-based Ahika Consultantsy, released in 2015, calculates available biomass over the next decade.

It says main competition for wood residue and low-grade logs comes principally from the Daiken MDF plant, export pulp, dairy farms and

to a small extent garden centres.

It estimates forest harvest residue to make up around 10% of 340-to-350 tonnes of available wood on a skid site. By 2020, it predicts recoverable volume from provincial forests of more than 200,000 t/a. By 2050, the volume is expected to reach 600,000 t/a, says the report.

The biggest competition for that wood comes from Daiken plant, which averages 160,000 t/a from Southland, of which 65% comes from low grade logs. The balance being wood chip from Southland mills. Its total consumption is between 350-to-390 t/a, much of that coming from South Otago area forests. Current costs per tonne average $45-to-$55 per tonne at mill gate for low grade (Ki, pulp) logs.

Additionally available wood calculated for chipping by 2020 will include 60,000 tonnes of low value logs, 20,000 tonnes of billet wood and recoverable residue of 56,000 tonnes. In the meantime, the regional forestry estate will have increased by 1,313 hectares.

This would give an average of 331,000 t/a based on so-called wall of wood estimates through to 2022 from Southland forests.

This equates to the total energy equivalent in gigajoules p/a of 2,366,650 GJs. Ahika estimates 50,000 tonnes of low value logs currently exported as pulp and some of this could be diverted to local biomass users. It estimates some 90-120,000 sawmill wood chip should be available by 2040. This would leave 30-to-40,000 tonnes for dairy bedding and garden uses to be chipped by portable chippers to keep those other users happy.

On those figures, there appears to be a very healthy future supply of wood energy biomass for the province. NZL

Help for Otago young people to enter forestry WHILE THE LATEST PROVINCIAL GROWTH FUND HAND-OUTS focused attention on upgrading the historic KiwiRail Dunedin Hillside Workshops, it was a plan to help Otago students enter forestry that raised the interest of our industry.

As part of the package to help revitalise the Dunedin economy, a grant from the PGF’s skills and employment programme is being provided to assist young Otago people into long-term forestry careers.

Te Ara Mahi will invest $63,000 in the 2020 school year to support eight 17- and 18-year-olds to enter careers in forestry.

The funding will see young people in the region trained, upskilled and supported into local full-time employment, according to Forestry Minister, Shane Jones.

“They will gain first-hand experience in the forestry industry, from establishment to production, while gaining industry-related qualifications,” the Minister says.

“Forestry is a major industry in the Otago region but forestry companies are short of workers. Additionally, there’s an ageing workforce so it’s important that we encourage more young people into sustainable and exciting forestry careers.”

Participants in the programme will be recommended by their schools and will be interviewed for suitability before being accepted.

The PGF funding will pay for a qualified industry tutor, support the transport of trainees to the course and to work experience, and cover the administration costs required to run the course.

Forestry support was just a small part of the PGF investment announced to support economic growth opportunities for Otago, which is mainly going into the engineering and manufacturing sectors, with $20 million earmarked for the Hillside rail workshops and $5.8 million towards the establishment of a dedicated manufacturing agriculture technology business unit among the projects. NZL

14 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

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ForesTECH 2019

The internet of forestry things AS FORESTRY BECOMES MORE DIGITAL AND HI TECH, THE BIG limitation on how we can use new technology is the ability to communicate that information within the bush and with the outside world.

It’s all very well having monitors that protect the safety of lone workers, such as manual fallers and harvesting machine operators, but if the signals can’t reach their crew mates, no one will know if they suffer a mishap.

The same goes for other technologies that can help make forests a safer, more productive and more environmentally-sound place.

Fortunately, there are ways of making communications work, even in the most remote locations around New Zealand, including setting up permanent or temporary RF equipment on high points that can send and receive signals over a wide area. Such equipment is already being installed in forests in the central North Island, using solar panels or wind generation for power – other areas are likely to benefit as forest companies and telcos spread the net.

With coverage in place, the real value of the ‘internet of things’ (IOT) becomes available to foresters on the ground and their colleagues back at base, as explained to the FortestTECH 2019 conference in Rotorua last month by Shaun McBride of tech company, Thinxtra.

He says it will provide ‘real time’ information on what’s happening inside the forest, including what grade logs are being cut from write out, information gathered by the harvester/processor, what truck they are loaded on through RF tags and their progress to a port or mill.

But there’s much more we can do with IOT technology, including

monitoring the welfare and safety of workers with sensors fitted to their clothing, helmets or even boots, and recording things like heartbeat, body temperature and whether they are standing upright or laying prone on the ground.

We’re already gathering information from machines, but with the advantage of having it in real time, contractors can see how those machines are working at any moment, whether they are idle for too long (breakdown, accident or holdup), fuel use, oil/water/ temperature levels etc. Monitors in the fuel trailer will automatically alert the fuel supply company when levels get low and even show if there is water contamination in the diesel.

There’s scope for other useful information to be collected by forest managers, too. Such as sensors placed along waterways to provide flood warnings in high rainfall events – Pan Pac is already doing this in Hawkes Bay. Water quality can also be monitored for silting or contaminants, all in real time.

Fire detection in real time also becomes a possibility with heat/ smoke sensors placed around the forest – remote weather stations can provide more accurate information on mounting fire dangers.

Pest control is more effective with sensors telling trappers when a possum or rodent has triggered a trap, so it can be collected and reset.

Scientists can collect information on soil around the forest to help with decisions on if and when to fertilise. Even simple things like monitoring gates and special areas for security become easier.

“The internet of things is already here, it’s about how we gather and use the information now,” says Mr McBride. NZL

Better ground LiDAR with ‘alien’ backpack IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE WOODS today…and you see someone walking around with a strange-looking device on their back, don’t worry – they’ve not been captured by aliens.

It’s a LiBackpack, used for obtaining LiDAR images of a forest on the ground, under the canopy.

Made by a US company, GreenValley International, the LiBackpack is one of several LiDAR devices created for foresters to make life much easier for ground-based image capturing.

Currently a forest manager has to set up waypoints in an area inside the forest

16 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

and then move a LiDAR device around on a tripod to get ground measurements, which are then combined with aerial LiDAR to create an overall 3D image of the forest.

This takes time and is not it often a difficult process, but with the LiBackpack, the user simply straps it to their back and walks around the area to be measured.

And the latest version, demonstrated at the ForestTECH 2019 conference in Rotorua last month, now incorporates dual-laser sensors to enhance three-dimensional features within the point cloud. More ground could be covered if the wearer is riding an ATV. NZL

The GreenValley LiBackpack allows wearers to obtain ground-based LiDAR information faster and more easily than traditional methods.

ForesTECH 2019

Drones now essential for forestry THE DAYS WHEN DRONES WERE A NOVELTY TOY ARE WELL AND truly over, with UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) now an essential tool in the forest.

This was illustrated by the number of technologies covered at the ForestTECH 2019 conference in Rotorua last month where drones were key to their execution. Around two-thirds of the presentations were by speakers basing their work around drone use.

Simple tasks, such as flying over a cut-over to assess a recently harvested site can now automatically use software that measures stems on the ground and identifies valuable wood that can be recovered.

Drones are also being used in research to find ways of identifying recently planted trees on the ground to see how many have survived within, say, the first six-to-nine months, instead of sending out people to count them. This saves time and possible injury from trips and falls.

Lightweight LiDAR cameras are also being fitted to larger drones to record height/growth measurements of the canopy and increasingly,

to identify areas of disease or damage from wind-throw and also fire.

Drones are much cheaper to fly than aircraft, but they still have limitations with battery life and also having to fly within line of sight.

But the Civil Aviation Authority has now given approval for one forestry company, Interpine of Rotorua, to use drones under strict Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) criteria.

ForestTECH 2019 was also told of experiments being done by Scion researchers to make BVLOS viable for other drone users, through testing new technologies and establishing new protocols.

Among the promising lines of research is borrowing technology from the military, which already flies drones beyond visual line of sight and adapting them to civilian use.

Scion has broken it down into two categories, Soft BVLOS and Hard BVLOS and says it is following the soft route at present for extending the current range of drone flying rather than going for longer range under the hard scenario. The soft BVLOS will be easier and quicker to achieve and provide useful benefits to flyers, through low-tech initiatives. NZL

Planting trees with drones PLANTING TREES BY DRONE IN A FOREST may soon be commercially viable, following recent trials in New Zealand and overseas.

The technology has been developed by Seattle-based company, Droneseed, which outlined its plans at the ForestTECH 2019 conference in Rotorua last month.

Matthew Aghai, Director of Research & Development at Droneseed, says the idea was sparked by the spate of forest fires in California that has decimated many natural forests in recent years. He and his team wanted to devise a technology that could re-seed fire-ravaged forests ‘en masse’, to get young trees growing as soon as possible.

They came up with swarms of drones that could cover large areas, but then needed to develop a system of successfully getting seeds to the ground without being washed away or eaten by birds.

“One person can plant around 800 trees a day (over 2 acres), but one person with 15 drones could do the equivalent of 360 manual labour hours – we have a software platform that allows one person to operate 15 drones simultaneously,” says Mr Aghai.

Tests showed they actually needed fewer, but larger drones to cover large areas (three or four at most), but the method of seeding still took time, eventually ending up with

seeds encased in fibre packs called ‘pucks’ released individually from a container slung under the UAV. Following experiments in the US, the Droneseed team is now on version four of the puck and says they now hold together much better on the ground to provide an environment for the seed to grow into a tree.

Mr Aghai says Droneseed has teamed up with New Zealander, Keith Mitchell, to carry out trials in planting Manuka on steep land in various parts of the country and Douglas-

fir in the lower South Island.

“It’s early days, but the results are looking good, although we are working on ways to try and get those seeds into the ground more so we can make it work in commercial forests,” says Mr Aghai, adding that the aim is to get 500 trees planted per hectare.

In addition to planting out large tracts of land, Mr Aghai sees potential in drone seeding used for in-filling areas where young trees have died or planted areas have not taken. NZL

Swarms of drones used in early tests of aerial planting.

December 2019/January 2020 | NZ LOGGER 17

ForesTECH 2019

Young foresters advise how to attract new blood TWO YOUNG FORESTRY PROFESSIONALS GAVE THEIR OLDER colleagues some advice on how to attract new blood into the industry at last month’s ForestTECH 2019 conference.

Both Matt Cotterell and Jack Palmer are relative newcomers to forestry, from the University of Canterbury’s School of Forestry, but say they are enjoying the experience and their positivity needs to be spread far and wide.

Coming into the industry with no previous forest background, Matt is now employed as a Technical Forester with City Forests in Dunedin helping to plan and oversee daily operations as well as scope new land for future planting.

He says the outdoor work and environmental focus were major attractions for him and, in spite of outsider views to the contrary, he reckons it is an intelligent industry, bristling with hi-tech. It’s always looking for new recruits, too. Those aspects are very appealing to young people with a similar outlook to himself and they need to be targeted with those messages, he says.

Jack is a Forest Engineer with Forme Consulting Group and he told the conference about his experience assisting Pan Pac to bring its environment planning functions under the NES-PF rules into the digital age through the new ArcGIS Enterprise system the company is introducing to replace paperwork.

Above left: Matt Cotterell, Technical Forester with City Forests, Dunedin.

Above right: Jack Palmer, Forest Engineer with Forme Consulting Group.

He, too, relishes the technological aspect of his work and says the fact modern foresters get to play with cool devices, such as drones, remote-operated machines and tablets is something that will appeal to his generation.

Both are members of the recently formed Future Foresters group, made up of young professionals in the industry, who are using their voices to help change negative perceptions of the industry through social media and interaction with schoolchildren, to spark enthusiasm for forestry careers.

And they implored older foresters to get behind their efforts to encourage change and adoption of new ideas and new technology, which will increase the industry’s appeal to younger generations. NZL

Drones fly themselves under canopy DRONES ARE RARELY FLOWN UNDER THE FOREST CANOPY, for obvious reasons – it’s an obstacle course filled with trees that can destroy a UAV. Until now.

Auckland University is currently researching technology that can be incorporated into a drone to allow under-canopy flight, while an Australian company has already developed an add-on device that navigates the drone through a forest and takes LiDAR images at the same time.

The university work is still some way from being commercialised, but the Aussie Hovermap has been on sale for the past year and was demonstrated at the ForestTECH 2019 conference in Rotorua last month.

The Hovermap was developed by Melbourne-based company, Emesent, which was spun out of the CSIRO research organisation.

It’s a device that weighs just 1.8kg and clips underneath a suitably sized drone to enable it to automatically fly around a forest, about two metres off the ground, without hitting anything while it collects data from its surroundings.

Currently undertaken manually, LiDAR readings from the ground are essential in helping forest managers to map out what’s underneath the canopy, since aerial mapping mostly picks up the tree tops and upper foliage. Both sets of information can be combined, using special software to provide an overall 3D picture of the complete forest and ground for future harvest planning.

18 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

Emesent CEO, Stefan Hrabar, says the Hovermap uses the LiDAR signals to “create a virtual bubble” around the drone to ensure it can effectively fly around trees and other obstacles without human input – the bubble is increased to provide a wider safety zone, or decreased where the under-canopy is crowded.

Mr Hrabar says the Hovermap was originally developed for use in mines and areas where GPS reception is poor or non-existent, but its value to forestry was also recognised and it is now being offered to customers in New Zealand on either an outright purchase or monthly subscription basis. NZL

The Hovermap can navigate a drone through a crowded forest to capture LiDAR images.

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The first 8-wheeled Ponsse Scorpion King in New Zealand is road lining and thinning a Douglas-fir forest in Canterbury’s alpine region.

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The squirt boom allows Thwaites Logging owner, Aiden Thwaites, to reach out as far as 10 metres.

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HE IMPRESSIVE 8-WHEELED PONSSE SCORPION KING harvester parked in front of us is about as far removed as you can get from the first bush machine Aiden Thwaites remembers riding in.

It was an old, basic excavator that Aiden hopped aboard during school holidays as a seven-year-old, accompanying his father on rural contracting and native logging jobs around Southland.

Today, he has to pinch himself just to make sure he isn’t dreaming about being the owner of this cool, high-tech piece of Finnish forestry technology glimmering in the early morning sun against the massive, snow-capped, Canterbury alpine peaks in the background.

A few days earlier, as a winter blast interrupted spring, the snow was down to ground level in this privately-owned Douglas-fir block, which occupies part of the Forest Creek Station near the head waters of the Rangitata River, around one-and-a-half hours inland from Geraldine. It seemed an appropriate baptism for the new Ponsse – after all, it was developed to work in these frigid conditions in Finland.

The arrival of this machine, and two others from the Finnish manufacturer, marks the start of a new era for Ponsse in New Zealand.

Apart from a couple of wheeled harvesters that were brought here for a specific job in the North Island many years back, Ponsse has not had a proper presence in this market. Now, in the space of a few weeks, three brand new Ponsse machines have arrived – this

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harvester and two forwarders – as the company looks to establish a bridgehead into this country, via its Australian distributor.

All three machines have been purchased by Southlanders. In addition to the Scorpion King harvester, Aiden also took delivery of one of the forwarders, a 15-tonne payload Ponsse Buffalo. The other forwarder, a 23.7-tonne Ponsse Elephant King, went to Darryl Diack and is working in a clear-fell operation for Rayonier in Southland.

We’ll be taking a closer look at that machine in a future issue of NZ Logger. Our immediate focus is on Aiden’s wheeled harvester, which is contracted to road line and production thin the 30-to-40-year-old Douglas-firs on this station for Southland-based forest manager, Southern Forests NZ. This mixed-age forest has never been thinned, so it’s a bit of a challenge for both Aiden and his pair of Ponsse machines. In addition to getting the hang of a wheeled harvester, he’s also a newcomer to the art of thinning, having spent the past 12 years running a clear-fell crew after converting from rural contracting.

But he’s had time to think about it.

“The company had said to me five years ago there was a lot of thinning coming up and was I interested, and I thought about it for a while and finally put my hand up for it about three years ago and started to plan,” says Aiden.

“I felt that if I didn’t get in early it would be too late. I did a lot of research, talked to a few people and, yeah, I decided this was worth going for.

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“We’ve been doing a lot of woodlots that had been planted in the late 80s, some very scrappy, and what everyone has realised is that the better managed they are, the better the returns. It’s like raising lambs, if you want good lambs then you put a bit of money into them.

As we are going into the second rotations, the owners are starting to look at that and the management companies are encouraging them to look after their forests and that means properly thinning them.

“I was doing dairy farm conversions before forestry, so I’ve been cutting down trees for longer than 12 years. But this is my first jump into thinnings.”

And it has required a total re-think on the type of machines that would suit the work, the terrain and the changeable ground conditions.

Aiden says: “I’ve been using Waratah 624s on Hitachi 330 and 300 tracked bases and I’ve got a SATCO on a 350 and also run a forwarder (one of the last Timberjack 1710 models to be built).

“For this new work, I looked at machines specifically designed for thinnings and I was impressed by Ponsse. Going off all the information I got from the internet and what I’d read, the visibility from this machine (the Scorpion King), with the boom slung over the cab really stood out. I liked it a lot.”

Aiden found a kindred spirit in Brett McIntyre, owner of Invercargill machinery specialist company, 2 Tyre Tracks and Hire Ltd, who had also become interested in Ponsse after seeing them at work in Europe. Brett had already been in touch with Australian Ponsse importer, Randalls Equipment, about bringing the brand to New Zealand, which led to him becoming the South Island agent. He arranged for a trip across the Tasman so he and Aiden could view the

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Finnish machines working in a Slash Pine thinning operation near Gympie in Queensland.

One of the goals of the visit was for Aiden to validate whether going with an unknown machine in this market was the right decision.

“I wanted to look at one that had done a few thousand hours and see how it was holding up,” says Aiden. “You’re always nervous about buying a new machine, but more so when there’s no history in this market.

“So I met the owner of that machine and talked to the two guys who had operated it from new – they’d done seven and a half thousand hours in it and were really happy with how it was going.

Production was quite impressive with what they were doing.”

That trip helped settle any doubts in Aiden’s mind, including how a relatively large machine would cope inside the confines of a thickly planted forest canopy.

He already knew that wheeled harvesters could be successful in thinning applications in New Zealand, through Bluewood Logging’s experience with a TimberPro and Hurring Logging’s use of John Deere wheeled harvesters – both working in Otago.

“We figured that Mike was real happy with his machines when he bought the second one – you don’t buy a second machine if the first one’s not working. They’re getting some really good results, even doing some clear fell with them,” says Aiden.

But there is a key difference between those machines and the Ponsse. They are six-wheelers, whereas the Ponsse Scorpion King that Aiden set his sights on is a larger 8-wheeler, yet he’s fairly relaxed about it.

Above clockwise: The unique twin arms behind the cab that support the boom allow superb vision for close in cutting; The cab and boom use the same rotation and levelling mechanism, so that the operator is always facing the felling head; Auto tilting keeps the cab on the level on easy-to-medium slopes; These Douglas-firs have never been pruned or thinned, but the Ponsse H7 harvesting head has no trouble de-limbing them.

“There’s not a lot of difference in length between 6-wheel and 8-wheel machines,” reckons Aiden.

He’s right. There’s just 76mm extra in the total length of a Ponsse Scorpion King over the most recent John Deere 1470G brought in by Hurring Logging.

But why go for a wheeled harvester in the first place when there’s a good selection of tracked excavator base machines that are already well proven in thinning operations around New Zealand? After all, tracked machines are more compact and much cheaper, even when fitted with a levelling cab to work on steeper slopes.

“There are two main reasons I went with wheels,” explains Aiden.

“One is for the comfort. The low oscillating design and the rubber tyres are easier on the body. And the other thing is traction – with the band tracks on, this will outclimb any tracked machine, although we’re not using the tracks on this job.”

There’s also the not-so-small matter of weight. Kiwi loggers have a preference for heavier harvesters in clear-fell operations to cope with large piece size wood, but that’s not really a consideration in thinning. In fact, it pays to have a lighter machine that won’t compact the ground around the roots of remaining trees, especially when the weight is spread across eight wheels.

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The Scorpion King wins in this regard, tipping the scales at 22,500 kg (without the head or band tracks), while a typical tracked harvester used in thinnings weighs in around 30,000kg. That’s a saving of seven-and-a-half tonnes. Even with a set of band tracks fitted it will still be at least three tonnes lighter. Another bonus from lighter weight is lower fuel economy because you’ve got less mass to lug around.

The chips were definitely stacking up in favour of the Ponsse, but the cost was still daunting, and Aiden admits that he did consider a secondhand machine “but everything had high hours and I was only interested if the hours were moderate”.

He goes on to say: “I figured if I was going to make it work it would probably be better to go with new machines and you’d get the factory support, obviously, with the trainers and everything else.

Getting the two machines as a package seemed to make sense.

“I’ve worked my way up doing clear-fell with old gear and I’ve got a background in mechanical work, but I’ve sort-of had enough of fiddling around with fixing machines.”

With choices made, Aiden put his order in for the wheeled SERIOUS POWER FORand BIG LOGGERS harvester and forwarder in March wasTIME fortunate to get his name on a pre-ordered Scorpion King that was destined for the Australian

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Similar machines used for thinning trees in other operations around New Zealand are all 6-wheelers, but the Ponsse’s 8-wheeled configuration is not much longer and it is proving very capable inside the canopy.

market.

“When I first rang they had a stock machine but by the time I flew over it was gone and they had one on the way and by the time that landed it was gone and they had just one available for the rest of the year and I had to bite the bullet if I wanted it or not,” says Aiden.

“It was already pre-ordered, but I managed to swap with the guy who ordered this one, as he wasn’t in a hurry.”

The forwarder on his shopping list, the Ponsse Buffalo, was much easier to secure because it was already in stock in Australia.

It’s smaller than his existing Timberjack 1710, designed with thinning operations in mind. Both the Scorpion King and Buffalo are powered by identical Mercedes-Benz engines and also share other components, which cuts down duplication of spare parts and consumables, such as filters. Wheels are the same size too, but the forwarder has more aggressive tyres.

The two machines arrived in the middle of the year, a few months ahead of when the thinning job was due to start in Canterbury, which bought the Thwaites Logging team some time to try out and get used to each Ponsse on home turf in Southland.

Aiden put himself into the cab of the Scorpion King, while his son, Dylan, took charge of the Buffalo, trialling them on a couple of clearfell jobs for Southern Forests.

Fortunately, the Scorpion King was already set up with one of the larger thinning heads built by Ponsse, the H7, which can handle tree diameters up to 650mm.

“We did a couple of different species – Corsican and Radiata – and

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it handled them really well,” says Aiden.

Ponsse also sent a trainer from Finland for a couple of weeks to get them up to speed initially and he returned later to help set the harvester up for thinning Douglas-fir in the Canterbury job.

“That first two weeks was enough information for me to absorb at one go so I could get myself up and running and then I’d be ready for another shot at it,” says Aiden.

“There’s still a lot more automation to get my head around.

Things like auto-cut, so as soon as you take it off the stump it will go straight to optimise and it will feed and cut automatically. Never had optimisation on any of my heads before. In woodlots you don’t really need it because you’ll spend most of your time over-riding it anyway.

“With the two blocks we did down south, one was really rough and the optimisation sort-of worked but it was not easy. The next block we did was nice, well stocked, pruned and it worked really well, and we could see the advantages of running it.

“That job we did down there was to gain experience on the machine, because there’s no coverage in here, no cellphone, nothing.

Down there I could get on the phone and ring the trainer if I needed help with something – like I had to do my own APT file, which is all a bit new and we got it done. But I didn’t want to come in here without anything behind me, being so remote.”

And where it’s working now is very remote, indeed. When the NZ Logger Iron Test team arrives at the Forest Creek Station, it’s just Aiden and his Scorpion King that we encounter. He’s brought the harvester up to Canterbury ahead of the Buffalo to start on the 16

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kilometres of road lining to make sure there is enough wood on the ground when the forwarder arrives.

It also gives Aiden time to familiarise himself with the trees he’ll be tackling in these blocks before venturing inside the canopy. He’s still not quite sure how he’ll approach the thinning yet and is awaiting the arrival of the forest manager in a few days so they can create a workable plan. It’s fairly well stocked and not as straightforward as taking out every third row. So the focus now is road lining.

I’ve seen Ponsse machines on display and at work in Australia, but it’s still something of a novelty, especially viewing the 8-wheeled Scorpion King up close in our own forestry environment. It actually resembles a giant ant, rather than a scorpion. And it looks bigger than I remember, although the Scorpion King is not the largest wheeled harvester in the Ponsse range – that honour goes to the Bear, a 24,500kg 8-wheeler powered by a 260kW (326hp) engine.

What makes the Scorpion King look so different to the Hurring John Deere 6-wheeled harvester that we tested back in 2015 near Balclutha, is how the boom and arm are mounted. On the John Deere, it sits on top of the front bogey, completely detached from the cab. But on the Ponsse the boom is shaped like a wishbone and attaches to the turntable behind the cab. When the driver lowers it, the twin pieces of the boom come either side and down over the cab.

“The first time I brought the boom down I ducked because I thought it was going to hit me,” says Aiden.

“You get used to it eventually. But it’s great to have clear views either side of the cab without a large boom in your way.”

The frame consists of three parts linked by rotating joints, with the cab and boom located on the middle frame, which is

Those hydraulic lines appear to be very exposed to any wayward trees, but owner, Aiden Thwaites says he hasn’t snagged them yet. automatically kept hydraulically levelled, up to 12-degrees either side and 15-degrees longitudinally, according to the terrain. The cab pivots through 280-degrees in unison with the boom, so the operator is always facing the action. Sounds complicated, but it works damn well.

The cab itself appears quite small, with just enough room for the air-suspended seat, but because it resembles a glass bubble and has very narrow pillars, Aiden says you feel very connected to the outside world, especially with a complete absence of guarding bars over the polycarbonate screens.

“It’s a great cab – even though it’s small, you don’t feel hemmed in because of all glass and the visibility is great,” he says. For very sunny days, there are sun reflection blinds on all sides and the roof to cut the heat and glare, while the A/C system keeps the interior

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It looks more like an ant than a scorpion, but the Ponsse Scorpion King is proving its worth in thinnings.

atmosphere cosy.

It’s remarkably easy to enter, too. A set of shallow steps extends between the front wheels, with the lowest one just 300mm off the ground to provide a gentle climb and you enter through a large front door. Sit down, close it up and the words that come to mind are ‘space age’ – quite a different feel from any forestry machine I’ve sat in.

Even the controls are different. No steering wheel, just a flat pad with buttons at the end of the left armrest and a control pad mounted on what Ponsee describes as a ‘comfort ball’ at the end of each armrest. Directly in front of the operator, on the dashboard, is the touch-screen computer monitor that displays all the functions of the machine and the optimisation information from the head.

I’ll leave it to our guest Iron Tester, Matt Lydon, to explain the rudiments of the controls and give his impressions, but Aiden tells us the way they work is similar to the traditional levers on a tracked excavator.

“So the up and down and sideways works the same way but it’s the configuration of the buttons that is totally different and that took a while to learn,” says Aiden.

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“What I did for a start was grab trees and get the feel of it, then process a few and after a day or so I began knocking some over.

“I was very surprised by how fast it is, the speed of the head and that. I’ve got it dialled back because it’s way too fast for me at the moment and I need to get used to how it works first. But it’s still plenty quick enough.

“Very different to a tracked machine. I’ve been driving excavators since I was seven years old, clearing drains for my father and to jump on this...yeah, it’s different alright. It is very comfy; you can do a long day and when you get out, you still feel fresh.”

Moving to the rear of the machine, Aiden opens up the bonnet to show off the 6.4-litre, 6-cylinder Mercedes-Benz OM906 LA engine.

Being a stage 3 unit, it doesn’t require AdBlue and is very powerful for its size, delivering a peak power output of 205kW (275hp) @ 2,200rpm, while the 1,100Nm of torque has a broad spread, coming on from as low as 200rpm up to 1,600rpm. That makes it very responsive to a nudge on the accelerator pedal.

The power is directed to the eight wheels through a hydrostatic drive transmission, much like you’ll find on most forwarders already working around New Zealand.

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Ponsse owner, Aiden Thwaites, gets set to open the hydraulically operated bonnet.

The hydraulic pumps are supplied by Danfoss with separate hydraulic pumps and circuits feeding the harvester head and crane to ensure they’ve always got a good amount of flow for multifunctioning. The mechanical driveline is manufactured by German manufacturer NAF. Aiden points to a vacuum pump unit that can be switched on from inside the cabin should an oil line break or while undertaking maintenance on the hydraulic system, thus preventing excessive oil spillage onto the ground – a very good environmental feature.

And, most importantly for a machine working under the canopy,

the Scorpion King has a Dafo automatic fire protection system.

The Scorpion King has also been accessorised with an electric hydraulic oil refill pump and fuel filling pump to make life a little easier. Plus, there’s an on-board air compressor to blow any debris still clinging to the fins in the radiator that the auto reverse hasn’t removed, as well as stuff that’s built up around other parts of the machine.

Aiden also shows us the clever collection of storage spaces tucked away behind opening panels and under the two top steps in front of the cab where he stashes spare chains, bars and tools.

There’s no shortage of LED lights for early morning starts and when it’s operating among dense trees under the canopy. We counted 20 dotted around the front, sides and rear of the cab and boom – which means they all move with the cab/crane to keep the light focused on what the operator is viewing.

Speaking of the crane, and the implement on the end, these are both made in-house by Ponsse. Logic would suggest that the C50 crane shouldn’t work as well as it does – it looks too intricately designed. But the lower arch is supported by substantial cylinders on either side and a large, double-acting cylinder for the arm. It also features a squirt boom, which is always handy if you’re trying to reach a tree under a densely packed canopy. This extends the reach out to 10 metres, which is comparable to other wheeled harvesters in this class. The 252 kNm of lifting torque suggests it also has plenty of grunt to deal with heavier trees.

And with the boom and arm positioned dead centre in the machine, it makes for a very stable platform. More on that shortly.

On the very end is the Ponsse H7 harvesting head. Just like the

Climbing banks and steep terrain is child’s play for the Ponsse Scorpion King.

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crane, the head is a very nice piece of engineering, but doesn’t look beefy enough to work in New Zealand forestry conditions. However, Aiden says looks can deceive. In spite of its very compact design – 1,500mm in length – and light weight – just 1,150kg – he’s had no problem grappling with 2-tonne trees and the 30kN feed force propels stems through the three rollers at an impressive 5 seconds per metre to detach any limbs with the four knives before the bottom saw makes the cut (there’s no top saw).

Time to see the Scorpion King in action. We ask Aiden to demonstrate his technique, and the Ponsse’s capabilities, on the Douglas-fir trees either side of the narrow track.

Aiden tells us he has to go through a very elaborate checking process before the Scorpion King will allow him to fire it up, which includes ensuring that the steps are retracted, seatbelt is buckled, the head is grounded etc.

It’s very quiet when he does start the engine and sets off down the track to where he left off cutting trees the previous day.

Immediately you can see another advantage of having a wheeled harvester – speed over the ground. We have to jog to keep up.

There’s no information on its top speed but it must be in the region of 20km/h, which is what the Buffalo forwarder can hit using the same running gear.

Aiden says it came in handy when delivering the Scorpion King a couple of days earlier, because the transporter couldn’t get close to the thinning block and it didn’t take long for him to drive it in.

Additionally, the weight of the machine (minus the band tracks) meant the transporter did not require a pilot vehicle. Another bonus for transporting is how the crane folds up to sit the harvesting head on the steps in front of the cab.

With its long reach, the Scorpion King is able to get the head to most of the roadside trees without venturing from the track. But some are sitting high up on a bank and the machine’s climbing ability and frame movement is ably demonstrated. Very dextrous.

Even with the speed of the head dialled back, it looks really quick and is powerful enough to remove some reasonably large branches with just one pass.

While the cab/boom rotation cannot match the full 360-degrees provided by an excavator, it’s as good as you need in this sort of work and Aiden seems to have enough turn to deposit the de-limbed stems well behind the machine, before cutting them into logs.

And as he continues to climb up and down the bank, you really appreciate the incredible stability provided by those eight wheels and the active stabilisation system, which is based on detecting the direction and position of the crane, and then pressing the rear frame in the direction of work. Ponsse says that pressing the rear wheels against the ground, allied with the weight of the rear frame, the machine’s stability improves significantly when working on one side, even as it’s moving.

I’d love to see it working on a really steep slope. Probably wouldn’t require tethering – not that it would be easier to work on a tether while thinning under the canopy. But Ponsse does provide the option of fitting a winch to its harvesters and forwarders, and Aiden thinks he might put one on his forwarder at some future date.

As he works from one side of the track to the other, another

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Aiden Thwaites has a set of band tracks for wet conditions but he hasn’t needed to fit them on the Canterbury job. impressive feature of the Scorpion King is the speed of the slew, which turns out to be every bit as fast as it appears in the specs.

Aiden finishes his demonstration and after a comprehensive briefing session with Matt, our Iron Tester trades places and begins his first-ever Iron Test. Matt is a seasoned machine operator who has worked around the Canterbury region for a number of years and is currently in a John Deere tracked harvester with Lee Logging.

As expected, he starts off cautiously, but Matt is a product of the computer age and it doesn’t take him long to get to grips with the unusual layout of the controls.

Some of these trees are quite meaty, even though they are years away from maturity due to the much slower growing conditions in

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The Ponsse Scorpion King is bristling with LED lighting that turns gloomy operations under the canopy into near-daylight conditions. this higher and colder environment, yet it doesn’t seem to affect the poise of the Ponsse.

Aiden says in some situations it can feel a bit “rocky” on the wheels without the band tracks and he did consider filling the tyres with water but doesn’t think it is necessary, even with these large edge trees.

A few weeks later I catch up with Aiden again on the phone to find out how the thinning part of the contract is going and he says it is exceeding his expectations. But even though he benefitted from the Finnish trainer’s second visit, Aiden soon recognised his own limitations and decided to recruit an operator with experience of thinning using a wheel harvester, ending up taking on Al Hudson, who NZ Logger last met at the controls of a John Deere 1470 with Hurring Logging.

We spoke to Al a few weeks after he started on the Ponsse and he, too, was full of praise, saying: “Both the John Deere and the Ponsse have got their plus and minus points, but they feel very similar to operate.

“The main thing I like on the Scorpion King is the vision – you can see more from this cab and it also slews around more.”

After discussions with the forest manager, they decided to take the stocking down to 550 trees per hectare, as the machine was able to move around well enough at that level.

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“We’re getting around alright, but it’s hard to tell when you’re on the flat what the limitations with the extra length will be,” says Al. “I’m finding it very stable, the system they use is very good, even without water in the tyres or the tracks on – the centre of gravity is very low, apart from the boom.

“The length of the machine isn’t really a problem because you’ve always got to plan for the forwarder that follows in behind you and that’s long anyway.

“So I’m not going parallel with the roads, just going 20 metres, essentially – a boom length on either side and taking out the junk, as well as the odd one to get the spacing right. That head is good, being very narrow I’m surprised where I can poke it and you can reach very well. I miss the top saw – that was something we spec’d on the last John Deere and it was very handy.”

Aiden is very happy with the speed of the machine inside the canopy and he thinks they’ll be finished in here sooner than predicted At that rate, he should be well and truly out of the Forest Creek Station by Christmas and ready to experience thinning in pine forests back home in Southland.

And in the Ponsse Scorpion King and Ponsse Buffalo, he’s got just the machines to tackle the wetter ground conditions and steeper sites he’ll experience down in his home region. NZL

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iron test: Matt Lydon

THE MOST UNCANNY THING ABOUT SITTING in the space-age cab of the Ponsse Scorpion King is the feeling that you are inside a goldfish bowl.

Everywhere you look, there’s glass.

The effect is amplified because there is no boom masking your vision to the right. The way Ponsse has designed the boom and arm to come down over the cab from behind is unreal.

It makes a heap of difference to your all-round vision.

From the outside, the cab looks quite small, but it’s a different story on the inside. The glass bubble effect not only makes it feel bigger, there is more real space – enough for someone to sit behind the operator’s seat. Good for training a newbie. Good storage, too.

I’ve operated a lot of different machines with Brand Logging and now back at Lee Logging in Canterbury and the only thing that comes close to how the Ponsse feels would be a modern forwarder.

They’re both on wheels and you get a nice,

smooth ride over rough ground. And our John Deere 1910 has a cab that rotates likes the Ponsse and levels automatically when you’re on a slope.

The Scorpion King feels a bit more stable because you don’t have a boom adding weight to one side. It would be even more stable with the band tracks fitted.

The controls are very different to what I’ve been used to. No joysticks, just those pads with buttons and toggles that are really easy and smooth to operate. On the left pad is forward/ reverse, harvester up and down. One finger on a button to open just the knives and leave the rollers shut and on the end was another button, which would recount a tree so when you’ve finished cutting you push it with your little finger to zero the saw. On the other side a toggle works the drive rollers up and down, while forward and back did the steering. There’s a single foot pedal for the accelerator on the floor.

Took a while for me to get the hang of it, but

Iron Tester, Matt Lydon.

I followed Aiden’s advice to lean my elbows on the armrests when working the pads and it definitely helped. The more time on it, the faster and smoother you would become, I’d say.

Even with the speed dialled down there was plenty of power, and watching how the head mowed through those rough branches was impressive. Felt like it had really good drive power. The .404 chain cut through everything fine. I did miss the top saw, though. If you break the end of a tree you tend to go looking for the top saw to cut it off.

It slews nicely – perfect for what it’s doing – and there’s no delay in response when you go

Right: The top two steps open up to provide a box for tools and access to the hydraulic plumbing.

Below: Tucked into the right rear wheel arch is this nifty storage compartment to house spare harvester blades.

Below right: The Mercedes-Benz engine tucks neatly over the rear bogie, under a large opening bonnet, along with the cooling system that includes a hydraulically driven, auto-reversing fan.

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EST 1909 EST 1909 | ZEALAND WWW.SHAWS.CO.NZ 0800 4 SHAWS THE SUPPLIER THE SUPPLIER TO NEW TO NEW ZEALAND HEAVY HEAVY INDUSTRY INDUSTRY 34 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

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IFICATION

SPECIFICATIONS - PONSSE SCORPION KING WHEELED HARVESTER ENGINE

BOOM/ARM

6-cylinder, 6.4-litre Mercedes-Benz OM906LA, Tier III Bore & Stroke 102mm x 130mm Power 205kW (153hp) @2200rpm Max Torque 1,100Nm (from 200-1600rpm) Tractive force 180kN

Arm type Reach Lifting moment Slewing torque

TRANSMISSION Type Hydrostatic, 8-wheel drive Speed 0-20km/h.

TYRES Front and rear

710/45-26,5

HARVESTER Make/model PONSSE H7 Feeding speed 5m/s Weight 1,150kg Rollers 3 Knives 2 front, 2 rear, 2 fixed Max de-limb opening 640mm

CAB

REFILL CAPACITIES (LITRES)

Type Rotating/levelling Max rotation 280-degrees Sideways tilt 12-degrees Fore/aft tilt 15-degrees

Fuel tank Hydraulic system (inc tank)

HYDRAULICS Crane pump Harvester head pump

145cm³ 190cm³

to lift a heavier tree. It’s very accurate.

The only time you really notice the boom is when you stretch right out and it comes down close over the cab. I can see why Aiden ducked the first few times it came over.

I was impressed by the optimising system. A good feature is how it

PONSSE C50 10 metres 252kNm 57kNm

410 280

DIMENSIONS (MM) Length Width Shipping height Ground clearance Operating weight

8,020 3,085 3,720 655 22,500kg base (without head or band tracks)

cleans up the branches on the butt automatically.

At Lee Logging we’re doing road lining at the moment and It made a good comparison to see how the Scorpion King works against our tracked harvester. But it’s thinning that it will be doing mostly, and it was a shame I wasn’t able to try it inside the stand. Maybe next time. NZL

Above left: The compact Ponsse H7 harvester is ideal for thinning work but has also proven adept at clear-cutting pines up to 650mm in diameter – the only drawback is no top saw.

Above centre: The cab is much roomier than it looks, thanks to its shape and the huge expanse of glass.

Above right: No traditional joysticks to control the machine, just this comfort ball at the end of the right armrest, a squarer pad on the left armrest and a touchscreen for other functions. Very European

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NZ Timber

Story & photos: Jim Childerstone

A

COUPLE OF YEARS AGO THE OLD firm of Hardie & Thomson morphed into Health Based Buildings (HBB).

And it is now busily adding to its 110-year-old premises in upper Colombo St, Christchurch to showcase its products, and educate the general public on the benefits of healthy buildings.

The company is eliminating the more toxic chemicals in timber treatment, such as arsenic and chrome, using more friendly solutions.

It is in the process of featuring NZ indigenous hardwoods, which do not require treatment for durability.

A variety of non-toxic treatments are being used among its other products, including Radiata and particle board.

This is also proving to be a lifeline for struggling Red Beech producers over on the West Coast.

A huge promotional push is being undertaken by HBB to get this attractive indigenous harvested product into the public arena.

So the current logo includes ‘Health Based Buildings – Forever Beech’. This was the former name of the original start-up operation by entrepreneurs Jon Dronfield and John Birchfield at the Blue Spur plant near Hokitika nearly 20 years ago.

This followed research by Timberlands West Coast scientists, led by KIt Richards, into sustainable management of native forests now covered by the Forestry Act. Aided by a USA-based investor, the operation was shifted to the existing Reefton Sawmill nearly ten years ago.

Since the investor’s departure three years ago, the mill was downgraded to just producing lumber, while its kiln dryer and

Above right: Health Based Buildings director, Casey Thomson, proudly points out various tones of Beech flooring in this sample display.

Right: More Beech samples for customers to view at the Health Based Buildings display.

Opposite page: Health Based Buildings' Steve Hill selects from beautiful Beech decking timbers for a customer.

38 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

December 2019/January2020 | issue 40 processing machinery was temporarily out of action.

Dronfield has persevered with sustainable recovery of Red Beech under the Forestry Act from private land owners mostly in the Buller area, totalling some 6000ha.

More recently the Dronfield family took a punt and bought the Reefton plant. It was a question of virtually starting again, but this time with the expertise of HBB. The Christchurch timber merchant’s Wigram-based plant is concentrating on Red Beech products, producing flooring, decking, panelling and weatherboards.

It out-sources the manufacture of Beech LVL beams and veneers. The Colombo St timber yard also supplies dressed wood for Joiners and cabinet makers.

Owner and Managing Director, Casey Thomson (whose grandfather founded Hardie & Thomson on the Coast), says the contractual purchase agreement the firm has with Seymour Forestry is based on volume of production, currently some 50 cubic metres a month. The firm had bought timber from the original Forever Beech plant at Blue Spur.

He realises there is much work still to be done, but predicts that once push gets to shove with increasing production, the future of the Reefton mill will look more rosy.

Both Casey and partner, Robin Curtis, are extremely confident that in the future this hardwood will increase in popularity.

NZ Timber

Casey is sceptical whether some of the so called FSC certified wood being imported into this country is sustainably logged.

A timber consignment may only include about 20% of FSC certified wood, yet the whole consignment carries the logo, he explains.

What’s more, Beech hardwood equals

the density and impact capability of Kwila imported from Indonesia. It is also costcompetitive with Kwila.

It appears there is considerable negativity among architects, building designers and builders towards native hardwoods that Thomson and Curtis are focusing on.

Also, government procurement policies

should be of considerable help, they feel.

Casey says it pays to be straight-forward and honest with the harvest, manufacture and promotion of all HBB products, particularly in the education of the general public, and focusing on the attributes of native grown, sustainably harvested timbers. NZL

Some of the 300m3 of West Coast Beech waiting to be manufactured into end products.

Southland Silver Beech finds national markets

By Jim Childerstone

T

UATAPARE-BASED LINDSAY & DIXON managed a different approach from its northern neighbours.

Having logged Western Southland forests over the years the company was able to negotiate with local Iwi under the Waitutu Block Settlement Act 1997 to manage its forests.

These lands were awarded to the Waitutu iwi under the South Island Landless Native Act (SILNA) early last century.

This allowed the Waitutu Incorporation to derive income from its forests.

A 100-year contractual agreement was signed with the Waitutu Holding Company to sustainably manage and harvest the resource.

Lindsay & Dixon currently cuts Silver Beech (Nothofagus Meniezii) extracted from about 11,500 ha of Maori-owned forests in Western Southland for its Tuatapare Sawmill.

It is certainly not a new mill but has been upgraded to produce T&G flooring, dressed board for internal facings as well as supplies to builders and joinery firms throughout the South Island.

Logs are removed under Forest Stewardship

40 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

P

M s

T s p Beech logs sustainably harvested from native forests on the West Coast.

M a

* Council certification on a sustainable basis from Iwi-owned Rowallan and Longwood Forests. Also, from other SILNA blocks.

Managing Director, Bernie Lagan, recalls the huge costs of FSC certification, reaching into hundreds of thousands of dollars, back in 2007

The finished products are sold as Maple and Cherry Beech.

Was it worth it? Certainly now all products are stamped with the logo enticing green lobby buyers and featuring attractive New Zealand medium density hardwoods. NZL

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NZ Timber

WEST COAST WANTS ANSWERS ON NATIVE TIMBER FUTURE

By Jim Childerstone

S

OUTH ISLAND WEST COAST TIMBER people want some hard answers about their future.

They want to know why there is little encouragement to use their own prolific indigenous hardwood forests.

Government statistics show that imports of hardwood timber products into New Zealand average some $90 million per year.

Much of this timber is suspected to come from unsustainably logged tropical forests.

Yet, in New Zealand, sustainably extracted Beech and Podocarp has proven to benefit privately owned forests, providing income for forest owners and management.

In July this year the Coast Wind Blown Timber (Conservation Land) Act that allowed some harvesting of trees blow down

by Cyclone Ita (2014) on Department of Conservation lands came to an end.

Sites earmarked by DoC for selective log extraction from downed trees employed eight crews and created a niche market for a time.

DoC, too, was happy with the royalties of $250 per cubic metre for Rimu and $60 for Red Beech, which bolstered the Department’s kitty by nearly $1m.

Timber merchants and joiners were happy as it provided a boost to the industry.

One big question being asked is why the Act cannot be extended, or set in stone, as ever more volatile weather events occur.

Loggers view the hundreds of thousands of hectares of DoC land on the Coast as a potential resource, similar to private forests, where sustainable native logging practiced under strict rules covered by the Forestry Act is limited.

Back in the 1990s, environmental scientists, led by Kit Richards, researched methods of log extraction without disturbing ecosystems and biodiversity, only to be overtaken by events when all native logging was banned in 1999 by the then Labour Government.

Their research has been carried on under the Forestry Act, mainly on Red Beech in the Buller area, by two ex-Timberland West Coast scientists, Jon Dronfield and John Birchfield.

A plant was set up at Blue Spur near Hokitika to process the wood, kiln dried and dressed, for sale to timber merchants. The

42 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

Helicopters are used to recover native logs to minimise ground disturbance. plant was later moved to Reefton, when the US-based Bishop Family bought the existing mill and set up processing machinery to manufacture flooring, veneers and other products.

In August 2019, the mill was purchased by the Dronfield family with the business registered as Seymour Forestry. 100% of the mill’s production is now sold to Christchurchbased Hardie & Thomson, now known as Health Based Buildings (HBB).

Promoted under the original name of Foreverbeech™, it now has a supply agreement with HBB, keeping alive future prospects for expansion. But this won’t be easy with the general apathy about the use of native hardwoods. So a major push has been mounted by the company to highlight the benefits of this timber to the market.

The company is pushing the sustainability of the wood, along with its many appearance and use virtues. The sustainable harvesting technique used in the managed private forests under the Forest Act is the extraction of between two and four cubic metres of selected stems, creating a canopy break.

This allows seedling growth, which may have been almost dormant for a considerable time, to shoot for open space. The growth

rate can be phenomenal as the seedlings compete for light.

The logs of the cut trees are lifted out by helicopter, saving tracking to sites. This is calculated on a 15-year rotation cycle per hectare. Selected mature trees are between 80-100 years old.

The residue, branches, heads, offcuts etc is left in situ to form nutrients for regenerating forest.

Twenty percent of royalties are committed to continued forest management, biodiversity and pest control – considerably more than the DoC allocation per hectare.

Bird song is now prolific in these areas according to reports. And in a very limited way this is continuing up in the Buller.

But times are tough, and the situation is not being helped by successive government policies, developers, builders and architects who insist on using imported hardwoods.

Also, the inconsistent supply from the limited private forests is a disincentive to merchants and manufacturers.

Coasters are not holding their collective breath for any breakthrough from governments and authorities in the short term.

Many believe there is a lack of practical common sense when it comes to our use of sustainable natural resources locally while turning a blind eye to what is happening overseas.

Still involved with native logging, but in a very small way in forests sourced under the Forestry Act and plans, cutting mostly Rimu, are Mike McGrath of Kumara, Kenny Grifiths (cutting a small amount of Rimu at the Runuga Mill), Richard Ellis at Kaniere Mill, Tony Ross of Arahura, Arthur Gillman of South Westland (cutting Rimu on LINZ administrated river beds) and Brian Manera at the Ross Mill.

Mike McGrath sells his few cubic metres of cut Rimu to North Island clients after being kiln-dried in Christchurch, when he can get at the logs and dependent on demand. He believes the trend to declining demand for West Coast Rimu is not going to reverse.

Coast loggers and timber merchants can hardly be blamed for looking enviously at Provincial Growth Funding being doled out to various forestry projects in other provinces. NZL

Breaking Out

Maxing

the wood value

T

HERE’S PLENTY OF DOLLARS TO BE made from cleaning up the woody remnants from forests once the harvesting crews have moved on.

But maximising the value of that leftover wood has thrown up some interesting challenges to trucking companies, as well as loggers.

In this issue of NZ Logger, we focus on

44 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

three of the latest solutions to recovering those valuable residues.

The first is a unique self-loading billetbolstered log truck that is helping to clean up skid sites around the Bay of Plenty and Gisborne regions.

It was put together for Darren Sinclair, of Whakatane-based DPS Haulage, by Patchell Industries, with the HIAB crane supplied by

new distributor TRT. “This is a unique unit,” says Darren, “probably the first billet bolstered truck on a Kenworth K200 with a cab-mounted crane, rather than just a tractor fence, and this cab also rises.

“We went the cab way for two reasons: for driver appeal and for safety. After years of open cabs sitting up and out, we wanted to

make sure the operator was safe, so we went for the cab option.

“And for obvious driver appeal, as nobody wants to sit up there exposed. You’re out in the weather about as much as any normal logging truck driver would be to chain up, or set the truck up, but in the cab and out of the elements for the duration...then chain up and then you’re out of there.

“It’s a reasonably basic build, a K200 multi-bolster truck, with a three-axle multitrailer, and the crane that lifts the trailer onto the back of the truck. The trailer is a little shorter, as we lose overall length compared to what’s commonly out there, but we built a three axle so the size of the crane can still easily lift it on and off.”

The crane itself is a Hiab Jonsered 1088S,

Above: The impressive self-loading billet-bolstered Kenworth log truck built for DPS Haulage by Patchell Industries.

Photo: Outlaw Photography.

December 2019/January 2020 | NZ LOGGER 45

Breaking Out

a cut-to-length timber handling crane with a lifting capacity of 12 tonne-metre and lifting 3,450kg at three metres. This crane has an outreach of 9.6 metres with a capacity of 1,040kg at that length.

“Years ago, I used to drive a self-loader,” recalls Darren. “I’ve always wanted one in the fleet but the customer base hasn’t always been big enough to warrant it. But as our company has got bigger and bigger, a couple of years ago I planned to have one and build it, to see what the interest was like.

“So I built it and put it on the road in April; we have a corporate customer in Whakatane and FDL Distribution has a private interest in it as well, plus our own private work.

“You need a good customer base because not everybody requires a self-loader, so with our private work and our customers in Gisborne, it was something that I wanted to put into the fleet to complement both areas.”

With bases in Whakatane and Gisborne, Darren established his own DPS Haulage

46 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

operations in 2010, while continuing his long relationship with Patchell.

With around 35 vehicles in the fleet, plus daily subcontractors, Darren explains the reasoning to introducing the self-loader for the fleet: “We’ve built it multi-bolster, to cart the skid waste.

“Traditionally when export prices are really high, a lot of the pulp goes to the port and is exported out, and people start struggling for supply if it’s cost-effective to keep it uplifted and taking it into the mills, which you can’t put on a normal logging truck.

“It was a flip of the coin to see if it would all pan out. There was initial demand for this type of product, but now there’s even more emphasis on it due to environmental issues rather than leaving it in the bush, and some people are pushing to get that material out of there.

“Crane trucks like ours normally come in after the logging crews have moved out, pick up all that remaining material and anything

Above: The Trailer loaded, the new DPS unit is ready to head off into the forest.

Opposite page top right: The operator’s view of the load and controls from the enclosed cab of the crane.

Opposite page right: Musson Logistics’ 50MAX International taking on a big 28 tonne payload, up three tonnes on a conventional unit, plus the ability to self-load, offers numerous benefits, from maximising the RUC, to expanding job opportunities.

December 2019/January 2020 | NZ LOGGER 47

48 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

Above: Mills-Tui’s new 50MAX build for Musson Logistics is the first of its kind with a self-loading crane on this size log truck. expensive to build a truck like that.

“So you’ve got to have a bit of demand, both ways: how to get it out, and maybe some of the customers may need it to make up their pulp numbers with this type of material. They’ve got supply agreements and need to supply a certain amount, and we’re all ticking two boxes: using stuff that normally gets buried and leaving the skid site as clean as possible.

“It’s not all about being cost-effective, though the days of leaving this stuff behind may be numbered.

“I’m driving (this unit) myself, up to six days a week and we’re doing work with our private customers and also with Rayonier, so we’re tweaking everything. I’m ironing out the normal teething problems and learning how it all works.”

The change to TRT distribution for HIAB in New Zealand also meant the crane was the final part to be fitted to the unit.

“We didn’t really have time to test anything,” adds Darren, “as we had customers cutting wood and waiting for us to pick it up, so we jumped on it and went.

We had to tweak crane pressures and put a little time into it to find the dos and don’ts, and it’s been some time since I’ve driven one, and we’ve got it to a place where we’re about

to start teaching a guy, and pass on those dos and don’ts.”

The truck was also a custom unit, a Kenworth K200 Rigid built specifically for a truck-mounted self-loading crane. It’s a day cab, with a 600hp engine, rated with a 28.5t GVM, and 97t GCM. With the unit’s cost and seemingly limited potential, on the surface it could be asked if it’s actually worth building a unit like this.

But Darren’s experience counters all that: “Back in the day, I used to drive one and they are a good option for not just that material, but also cold decking out the loaders as well.

“If you have one of our private crews – given trucking is a bit of a premium at the moment, and driver and staff is pretty tough – and you can’t put the truck where you need it, or there’s a breakdown, or the truck is off somewhere else, and it’s holding the crew up, we can take over with that crane truck and cold decking, load our trucks and finish the job for them.

“There’s also general cleaning up, cleaning the skids, and multiple things that we can do with it.”

Meanwhile, down in Rangiora, Canterbury, Musson Logistics has gone big with its answer to transporting billets with the 50MAX self-loader built by Mills-Tiu.

211119_JD_Austimber

left behind and deliver it, plus they leave the skid in a clean and tidy situation. With the Tolaga Bay floods, and all that rubbish coming down the river, all this material has become rather important to get out rather than leave behind.

“With the billet wood, we also load and unload ourselves at the mill because the material is too short for the loaders to handle, so we do that ourselves. It takes a little longer, but you have to cost that into the business model – it’s not something we put our hands up to do, but the material is that short, it’s just easier. Once you put it on the ground, the loader can pick it up, so it’s unique and better for the guys to unload it themselves.

“It’s also about making the skid waste a little more profitable for everybody and getting it off site, and to the mill. That material is just as good, it goes into the mill as normal pulp would go, it’s fresh and they take it and chip it as though they would a load of six-metre pulp.”

Of course, the bottom line always rules business and with a specialised unit like this, it’s sometimes more a gamble than a guarantee.

Says Darren: “In the old days, it’s an expensive way of getting the stuff out, because you give quite a bit of tare weight away; plus, there’s loading/unloading compounds. You need to cart the type of material, it’s quite expensive to do...and

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This is New Zealand’s first 50MAX billet self-loader, and while it’s not the first time the idea has been floated, Mills-Tui and Musson Logistics combined with International and ExTe to build a very special unit that some thought simply couldn’t be done.

Combining a self-loader, lightweight constructed trailer with a Palfinger crane and some lightweight engineering, the whole operation came together to create a truly unique piece of logging equipment.

“This is the first 50MAX self-loading log truck that can piggyback its own trailer,” says Mills-Tui’s Dean Purves. “People have looked at doing it before, but due to the weight of the trailer and the crane’s lifting capacity, they’ve often found hurdles too big to overcome.

“Our logging trailers are generally lighter than everyone else’s anyway, but we use lightweight alloy ExTe bolsters to bring the weight down, supplied by The Forest Centre in Australia. We managed to get the tare weight really light, but it has actually got three bunks, so six bolsters, which made it even more of a challenge.”

Recalls Dean: “It all started off with an idea from Ricky [Musson Logistics] and

his awesome operator, Stu McKenzie and morphed into what we see here. We discussed the whole concept some time ago, and it gathered some wheels.

“Originally it was going to be a four-axle trailer, as we didn’t think we’d be able to do

it any larger ourselves. But we looked around and decided to come up with a five-axle with a 50MAX permit.”

The whole unit starts with Intertruck and an International 9870 600hp tractor, which offers a number of key advantages,

Nationwide Sales, Service & Parts

Pictured: Jonsered 1188S installed on JF Dixon Transport

Phone: 07 849 4839 Email: hiab@trt.co.nz Address: 48 Maui Street, Te Rapa, Hamilton

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Left: The Musson International shows its versatility with this load of milled posts heading off to a customer.

Right: McCarthy Transport’s doublebin Hyva hooklift truck and trailer unit is now picking up binwood around the Manawatu. according to Dean: “We could custom build the International in New Zealand, at Tauranga.

“After a fair bit of design work by MillsTui’s Jeff Miller, Intertruck custom-built this 8x4 that is perfect for the job. And they built it to the specifications we needed, plus it’s got a set-forward front axle, which gives us a really good deck length, to get the trailer up on it.”

The chassis is double-flitched, and International basically put another skin inside the chassis, typical of the crane construction industry, to add strength.

“Normally if it’s prebuilt you have to strip all the suspension,” explains Dean, “but with International building it here, it’s all part of the build process done in Tauranga, rather than the labour and time intensive headache of having to remove axles, retro-fit all the gear, and then reassemble it.”

This provided a solid, crane-ready base for Ham Sheck and the production team at MillsTui to build on.

The load is restrained with LT tensioners mounted under the deck. On the back doing the heavy lifting is a Palfinger Q170Z crane specified to Musson Logistics requirements, which weighs just under three tonnes. The Q-Series Palfinger is the upper end of the medium-duty class of EPSILON cranes in this model range and covers lifting capacities of 15-to-18 tonnes.

The trailer is something special too.

Weighing in at 5,660kg, the chassis is a Mills-Tui hi-tensile chassis shortened to suit and fitted with the lightweight alloy ExTe bolsters, which are all multi position to allow a wide range of loading options.

The truck is also spec’d with a Hardox skinned log deck with the Exte Quick Lock bolsters, Mills-Tui cab guard and dunnage racks all sitting on SI Lodec load cells for accurate weight readings.

And that magic weight reading? “It can carry 28 tonnes of payload, and with the 8x4 has plenty of traction,” explains Dean.

December 2019/January 2020 | NZ LOGGER 51

Breaking Out

That’s around three tonnes more payload than a conventional unit, which in scale terms is more than 10%. Plus, there are savings on RUC costs, which combined, makes it instantly more attractive.

Being on a 50MAX permit, there are some route limitations, but with the everexpanding network, it’s becoming an increasingly attractive option for operators like Musson.

“It can pretty much go on any 50MAX road,” adds Dean, “so it’s not route-specific and they go all over the show… it really suits what Musson does: they cart all timber, long wood, log poles, so it’s a real multi-purpose unit for what they do.”

In fact, with the engineering side, that was the hardest part of the build because in use, the new unit is proving to be very effective, according to Dean.

Further north, Whanganui’s McCarthy Transport has built and operates another option for wood recovery: a double-bin Hyva hooklift truck and trailer.

“This is our answer to binwood. We used to run crane trucks but we basically abandoned that for this process,” says McCarthy Transport’s Engineering Manager, John Patterson, aka JP. “Mark McCarthy’s been working on this system for quite a while, but in the last two years we’ve gone from no bins, to having four trucks with around 34 bins.

“We designed our own Makaranui trailers with an automatic locking system, so the guys don’t have to put pins in them; when they plug into the back it automatically locks the bin on.

We load the bin from the rear, so there’s no hydraulics on the trailer...there was no saving for us going hydraulic, so there’s a little more time in turnaround but it works, and we’ve got a five-axle bin trailer that weighs about 5.2 tonne, so it keeps the payload up.

“We did consider a unit where the trailer is pulled into the back of the truck, but for us the“The other thing is there’s no hydraulics in the trailer, it’s a five-axle air trailer. The thing with these bins is that they all disconnect and load from the rear and use guide plates to ensure the bin is centred during loading.

The auto locks are a cassette design to easily replace worn components.”

The Hyva hookloader system, distributed here by Tates NZ, is from Dutch company Hyva, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2019.

“The Hyva gives you lots of versatility, when you’re spec’ing it,” explains JP. “It’s easy to mount, for whatever chassis you have.

It’s fully serviceable with rollers that can be greased and a locking system – and the parts are available ex-Australia.”

52 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

The truck driver sets the bin down on a skid site for loading with woody residue – the previous barn door design was changed for a top-swinging design and works much better.

It’s the suitability of operation and the types of jobs that make this hookloader so appealing and suitable, adds JP: “The fact that we can pick the bin up and go, offers a huge advantage over a fixed truck, which needs a crane to load it and you’re carting a crane around all the time. We’re happy to cart the bin around, we can leave it at the skid site and rotate them in and out. Or on a smaller skid site, we’ll rock in, drop the bin, they will load it, we pull it out and away we go.

“We modified our mounts to put load cells underneath it, an Elpinstone load cell scale system… so you can bolt and unbolt the whole system in a couple of hours. We wanted to be able to pull the bin onto the truck and know exactly what it weighs.

“These guys pick up logs from 800mm to 3m. Some skids are big enough to put the bins on site and they load it, we just change them over. Other skids that are tight, we rock up any time of the day or night, drop the bin, they load it, and we take it away and put another one there. It all depends on the size of the skid, but it only takes them 10 minutes to load a bin – it’s done in a flash.

“And because it’s a bin, you just chuck it on and go. We’ll cart anything in a 150km radius.”

All the bins are fitted with telematics to keep track of where they are.

“It’s another income stream for the harvester – for stuff they were previously throwing over the bank,” says JP. “From a harvester’s point of view, you pick it up and instead of throwing it over the bank, just drop it in the bin, and it’s that easy. It’s a quality product and you’re recovering the fibre that may have been lost...and you’re not fighting that export market for the fibre.

“This has been driven by Winstones wanting to be able to recover more fibre from their forests, and we’re seeing the amount of pulp wood actually reducing as we’re carting more binwood.”

Scales are built into the system because, as JP points out: “We’re on the skid site we’ve got no idea what the weight is, so we pull each bin on the truck to weigh it – and we know just by the weight of it, which is the truck bin and which is the trailer bin. On the truck, the bin is only half full, but the trailer bin is full to the top.

“We’re running these units at 50MAX as we can’t get HPMVs up the Paraparas, but we’re working on that – but the reality is we can’t get the volume to get the weight up anyway.

The design of the bins themselves is an ongoing process, explains JP: “We’ve looked at and reviewed the bin design with a new shape and curved sides.

“The truck bin on this unit is our version one design, and the back bin is the revised design. The very first bins we did were a truck bin at 6.4m and the trailer at 7.4m, but both these are at 7.4 so it doesn’t matter which bin is used where.

“Originally we made those bins to match the bins that came with the original unit – we initially built six bins to suit that unit, but after them, we’ve done them all the new bins at 7.4m and then we even stretched one to 8.4m as a tipper bin.

“The evolution of design, initially pretty much a Real Steel design, for the scrap metal guys with a barn door design. We had no real experience, but to suit the McCarthy system, we basically made a couple of changes: all our bins have at least 100-150mm taper, so they’re wider at the back than at the front to aid the discharge.

“With the barn doors, we identified some potential risks so we’re now swinging the doors from the top – and all the feedback is positive. So, this new style is the future for us; we managed to keep them the same weight but improved them in the way we lock the door.”

You could say they’re hooked. NZL

M M

FOR SAFETY FORSAFETY SAFETY FOR SAFETY FOR AND ECONOMY ANDECONOMY ECONOMY AND ECONOMY AND

Contact us for your free copies Contact us for your free copies Contact us for your free copies Contact us for your free copies

0800 www.cop.co.nz 0800333 333005 005 info@cop.co.nz info@cop.co.nz www.cop.co.nz 0800 333 005 info@cop.co.nz www.cop.co.nz 0800 333 005 info@cop.co.nz www.cop.co.nz

LG25184

Maintenance Manuals and Chainshot Warning Stickers Maintenance Manuals and Chainshot Warning Stickers Maintenance Manuals and Chainshot Warning Stickers Maintenance Manuals and Chainshot Warning Stickers

www.fica.org.nz

Forestry Contracts Best Practice Guide The recent log price downturn has affected contractors throughout New Zealand. The log price now seems to be on the increase, so whether you’re going to start setting up, renewing and/or reviewing contracts we want to ensure you put your best foot forward.

Taking lessons learned from recent months, FICA has consulted its sponsors and partners in finance and accountancy to put together this forestry contract advice guide for all contractors to consider.

What is this guide?

• Take the lessons learnt from the recent downturn • Provide a best-practice advice guide for everyone to consider • Incorporate contract considerations when setting up / renewing / reviewing contracts.

Summary Checklist

1. Do you have a 120-day notice period?

2. Is there provision for paying stand-down rates for circumstances outside your control?

3. What is your profit margin?

4. What way do you capitalise them with new equipment?

5. Is there an allowance for variable costs?

6. What are the infrastructure needs and implications?

7. Who is going to be contracted to do the log cartage?

8. Is there an uplift penalty clause?

9. Has a harvest plan been completed?

10. What are the location factors and implications?

11. What are the special conditions of the forest?

12. Will the contract be a fixed-term contract or is it intended to be open ended?

13. Can you terminate your contract without penalty?

120 Day Notice Period

1. Do you have a 120-day notice period?

Allow for a 120-day period to provide flexibility in a downturn, as traditionally markets bottom out within 3 months and then you would hope they will turn around and decide to continue logging the job again.

A. The first 90 days at a reduced production rate (say 10% reduction in contract volumes per month).

B. At the end of 90 days the forest owner can serve 30-day termination notice if they still are unhappy with market prices.

Stand-down rate

2. Is there provision for paying stand-down rates for circumstances outside your control?

C. D. E. F.

when the clear fell crew arrives, or will they have had a chance to settle?

Is the local roading network able to handle logging trucks? What are the bridges like? Are there rivers in the valleys that could flood and impede access to the job?

Is the work solely a summer job or can you work all year round?

Woodlot winter logging can be difficult with under-funded infrastructure.

Has a Resource Consent been granted for the logging of this forest?

Read it and see what issues have been raised by the local authority.

Most importantly, do daily production targets reflect the realities of the above?

Site location

7. What are the location factors and implications?

A. Consider the site in relation to ports or sawmills. If it’s a long way from market, then it will be the first to be affected by log prices collapsing.

B. Will an isolated location increase your costs for machinery repairs?

Everything becomes more expensive so should you consider using new or near new machinery to mitigate this cost and downtime risk? (Refer 4).

C. Transporting into woodlots can be expensive and difficult to transport, some requiring significant walking of machines due to bridge and access conditions. This should be factored in, as it also chews into valuable production time.

Uplift / Cartage

8. Who is going to be contracted to do the log cartage?

Contact the cartage contractor, meet them and talk through issues. If you can, try and get a gauge as to how busy they are and if they are happy with the cartage rates.

9. Is there an uplift penalty clause?

Uplift needs to be locked in with a penalty clause that can be invoked.

Cartage rates have got to be sustainable for log trucks, so they don’t divert elsewhere.

10. Has a harvest plan been completed?

A. What are the average haul distances for the clear fell operations?

B. What are the maximum haul distances?

C. Is there a market for the pulp, or will it be left behind so the contractor won’t get paid for pulling it?

Special considerations

11. What are the special conditions of the forest?

This depends on whether you are a one-crew operation or multiple with the ability to pull back to corporate crews and how much confidence you have in ongoing work. Consider trade-offs as re-debt/ repair/production risks, appropriate weightings attached to each are very dependent on individual circumstances

A. Are there areas bounding streams/rivers, protected native forest, wahi tapu, etc? You need to be able to determine risk mitigation contingencies and special pricing conditions around these issues.

Where does the liability with these issues lie?

B. Is the entire forest economic to log or are there areas that will need to be left due to the cost of logging/roading them?

C. What are the boundary issues with neighbours (restricted access, assisted tree falling, fence reinstatement etc)? Does the forest owner get on with the neighbouring farmer? Even go to the extent of visiting the farmer and get an understanding of the neighbouring farmer’s expectation around the harvest and post-harvest reinstatement.

D. What is the local community attitude to forestry? Are people likely to be unhelpful and even hostile towards forestry contractors?

Variable costs

Contract term

A. Ensure there is a monthly escalation clause for key variable inputs (particularly fuel).

B. Ensure there is an annual review clause covering all costs for contracts over 12 months (such as wages, capex).

Exit clause for contractor

If something happens outside your control e.g. adverse weather events, road failures, poor trucking, interrupted shipping etc, ensure there is a clause allowing for payment of a stand-down rate.

Profit margin

3. What is your profit margin?

If in an exposed woodlot environment, ensure you have a stacked rate with no less than a 10% profit margin.

4. What weight do you capitalise your rate with new equipment?

5. Is there an allowance for variable costs?

Infrastructure

6. What are the infrastructure needs and implications?

A. Does the forest need road-lining and skids prepared? If yes, who will be contracted to do the logging work for this infrastructure prior to clear-fell?

B. What are the timeframes for staging road-lining/skid logging and the clear fell, i.e. are the new roads and landings going to be ‘green’

12. Will the contract be a fixed-term contract or is it intended to be open ended?

13. Can you terminate your contract without penalty?

Make sure you can terminate your contract with reasonable notice and without penalty. Often contractors must leave a job for financial reasons only to find that income is withheld on the basis that remedial work is required at the job site.

Contributors

top spot

End to a challenging year Safety/performance/quality

AND JUST LIKE THAT, THE END OF ANOTHER busy year arrives. While this year has had its challenges for some, in terms of the mid-year drop in log prices and the impact this has and is still having, it has generally been busy all round.

In terms of Top Spot, we thank all those who have participated for their support and effort and congratulate you all on not only taking up the challenge but showing a level of professionalism that everyone can be proud of.

As always, we are mindful that the year isn’t over until you are all safely away from work and spending some deserved time with family and friends over the break.

Get some rest, have some fun and we look forward to sharing the last of 2019 results and our top achievers with you in early 2020.

Meantime, we leave you with photos of some achievers from Period Three.

Sponsors – They don’t have to do this but they choose to!

Awesome companies, awesome people and awesome support!

They back you and your workmates to succeed as professionals, so why wouldn’t you support them.

They believe in what we do and what you do.

So a big ongoing thank you to our Strategic Partners – STIHL and NZ Logger and sponsor SWAZI. The best way to keep our industry working is to get out and support those businesses that support New Zealand.

Participating Companies This competition wouldn’t be what it is without our participating companies.

We understand the commitment it takes from them to be part of Top Spot and value their ongoing support and feedback.

Our ongoing thanks to Rayonier/Matariki Forests, Wenita Forest Products, Port Blakely, Crown Forestry, Brand Logging, CMH Logging, Hauraki and Moehau Logging, Thomassen Logging, Te Waa Logging, Lakeland Cable Logging, Logged on Logging, Pakiri Logging, Inta-Wood Forestry, Otautau Contractors, Heslip Forest Contracting, Waikato Forestry Services, Hodgson Silviculture, Makerikeri Silviculture, NJ Simns Forestry Services, SAS Forestry, XMen Forestry, Central Forestry Services, Mangoihe Logging, Kohurau Contracting, Tohaia Forestry Harvesting, Kuru Contracting, Dennis E Hayes Logging, Swain Logging, Lumberjack Logging, Ernslaw One, Blue Wood Logging, Mike Hurring Logging, McCallum Logging, Whisker Logging, Kaha Logging, Lahar Logging, Dempsey Logging, Moutere Logging, JBD Harvesting, McDougall Logging, Forest View Logging, Kimberley Logging, Dewes Logging, X Men Harvesting, Pakiri Logging, Storm Logging,

Lumberjack Logging, Eastside Logging, Veal Forestry, McHoull Contracting, Johnson Forestry Services, Pride Forestry, Halley Forestry, Penetito Forestry, FM Silviculture, Forest View Forestry, Wayne Cumming Contracting, Rodco Forestry, Johnson Forestry, Pro Forest Services, Eastside Logging and Norwest Logging.

Into safety?

Into performance?

Into quality?

Contact Shane Perrett on 0274 781 908, NZL 07 3483037 or at primefm@xtra.co.nz.

Jamie Metekingi, of Ribbonwood 11, was fourth in QC/Retrim for Period Three.

Nick Paewai, of JD Harvesting, was first-equal in Mechanised Processing for Period Three.

Georgia Balle, of Hauraki 91, was second in QC/ Retrim for Period Three.

56 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

Glenn Cole, of Moutere 8, was first in Yarder Operation for Period Three.

Scott Leask, of JD Harvesting, was second in Mechanised Felling for Period Three.

TD29912

Adam Diamond, of Hauraki 91, was second in Yarder Operation for Period Three.

TRUCKERS & LOGGERS FISHING TOURNAMENT

2020

19th to 21st March 2020 Paihia, Bay of Islands. Hosted by the Bay of Islands Swordfish Club (Inc)

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IF MEMBERS OF YOUR CREW ARE NOT MEMBERS OF A CLUB AFFILIATED TO NZ SPORT FISHING INCORPORATED A TOURNAMENT MEMBERSHIP OF $25 PER ANGLER IS REQUIRED. PLEASE TICK BOX IF TOURNAMENT MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED FOR ANGLERS.

TOURNAMENT MEMBERSHIPS REQUIRED No: __________________ @ $25, TOTAL: $ _________________ (Tick Box Alongside Anglers Name) $125 PER ANGLER, No: ___________________________________________ TOTAL: $ _________________ GUEST ENTRY (non anglers) $50 each, No: ___________________________

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new iron

SUMITOMO FOR B MACK The power of a 30-tonner, combined with the smoothness of a 13-tonner – that’s Braden Mackie’s new Sumitomo SH300-6, which is bashing its way through bush in the Manawatu. Guarded and bush spec’d by MSM Heavy in Fielding and fitted with Wedgelock attachments, this SH300-6 is a pleasure to operate says owner/ operator, Braden, of B Mack Excavations. Smoothness, operator comfort, power and stability makes a long day easy, he says. The machine was sold by Mardi Pritchard, AB Equipment, Lower North Island.

TIMBERPRO FOR BROOKS Jason and Kate Brooks, of Rangiora, have taken delivery of a new Timberpro TL775D from Komatsu Forest, which is working around the Canterbury area. The SouthStar felling head completes the package. The sale was made by Paul Roche, of Komatsu Forest.

BLUE MOUNTAIN CAT

CRAIGPINE VOLVO

This new Cat 538FMLL is the latest arrival for Dave Johnston, from Blue Mountains Logging. Dave is very happy with the performance of this purpose-built forest machine, which features an Ensign 1530 grapple, making for an ideal package. The Cat unit is working in the Omatoroa Forest. Sold by Mark Costello from Gough Cat.

This is the third Volvo for Southland’s Craigpine Timber log loading operation and the decision for Dave and his team was an easy one, as “nothing comes close to the Volvo for comfort, power and economy”. The machine was sold & delivered by Mark Hopwood and is the first loader to be leased by Craigpine using TransDiesel Finance & Leasing.

58 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

new iron BOAPOD FOR MARSHALL Tauranga-based Marshall Logging has taken delivery of its new BOApod hydraulic hose repair and maintenance unit, to enable machines to get up and running in as little as 20 minutes after a blown hose. BOA Hydraulics delivered the unit, trained the team and highlighted features, such as German-made precision crimping and cutting low voltage machinery, remote controlled motorised hose handling system, Yokohama hose, contamination free hose assembly, lockable compartments etc. Oscar Boakes is pictured with the Marshall team.

HITACHI & WOODSMAN PRO FOR LEALAND Rotorua-based Lealand Logging has taken delivery of a new Hitachi and Woodsman Pro 850 that includes the new Loggic control software for the head. The Hitachi has Trinder guarding and a purpose-built cab. The sale was made by Terry Duncan, of CablePrice.

BAIRD SUMITOMO & TIGERCAT Southland logger, Bobby Baird, has taken delivery of a new Sumitomo SH350TLFS with a full PFS guarding package and a Waratah HTH625C harvester, along with a Tigercat 1075C. Both machines are part of a new harvester / forwarder operation set up by Bobby for Log Marketing Ltd to supply Niagara sawmilling and export logs as required. The new Sumi joins two Sumitomo SH240TLFS fully guarded shoveller / loaders and is pictured with Bobby and his crew. The Tigercat 1075C forwarder has the forward sloping bunk option and TRS tyre configuration with band tracks all round. The TRS tyre option with skidder-type tread gives Bobby the option to run chains off during the summer to reduce chain wear and fuel burn during the right conditions in forest blocks and woodlots throughout Southland. Pictured with the new machine are Bobby and his crew, joined by his partner A J and mum, Judy, who turned up to see the new arrival.

December 2019/January 2020 | NZ LOGGER 59

NZ LOGGER classified

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60 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

ProvenAfter AfterSales Sales Proven Service Service ContactMarty MartyororBruce Bruce Contact Ph027 027324 3249091 9091 Ph 79Chambers ChambersStreet, Street,Tokoroa Tokoroa 79 enquiries@cdlloggrapples.co.nz enquiries@cdlloggrapples.co.nz

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ENSIGN 1500 MADILL 124 / 171 / 046 GUY SPLINED ROTATOR SHAFT MOTOR WINCH MOTOR

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NZ LOGGER classified

KOMATSU PC 400LC-8

expoSe youR pRoduct oR SeRvIce

This harvester has a full EMS build, boom and arm, tilt bonnet, cab etc.

The factory radiator and oil cooler have been replaced by an high flow radiator and oil cooler. Plus an auxiliary oil cooler in the counter-weight.

Base has done 3,985 hours. Base still has 2000 hours power train warranty.

Just had it’s 4,000 hours service.

The head has done 1700 hours and still has 2300 hours left on chassis warranty.

Has the latest optimisation timberite H16 computer system.

New colour marking which is not fitted.

Currently being used and will be available end of April early May so the hours will climb a little.

contact tRISH to adveRtISe

mobile. 021 925 600 phone. 09 571 3544

LG30188

LG18594

Get the right exposure through NZ Logger magazine and capture the Forest industry buyers directly.

Price $665,000 + GST Phone 0272 379 160

64 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

ABE_Us

2012 John Deere 748H Log Skidder

2009 John Deere 753 JH Harvester

8,500 Hours, Box Section Grapple, Winch & Front Band Tracks.

Ex Hastings.

15,000 hours, Waratah 622B with measuring, Topping Saw & optimiser.

A well serviced machine, Ex Christchurch.

$168,000 + GST

$125,000 + GST Tigercat 635C Log Skidder

2011 Tigercat 635D Log Skidder With 12,500 hours, new Engine, 4 new 30.5 rear tyres, Winch & 25 ft Grapple Ex Invercargill.

$199,000 + GST 2014 Tigercat LS855C Feller Buncher

Log Skidder with 16,827 Hours, Large Fuel Tank, 25 Sqft Grapple, 30.5 Tyres on the Rear. Recently had new Engine & front Diff fitted.

Ex Invercargill.

$152,000 + GST 2014 Caterpillar 545C Log Skidder

9,000 Hours, Tigercat 5195 Felling Head, tethering Hitch.

Ex Dunedin.

$378,000 + GST

2014 Tigercat 630D Log Skidder 9,000 hours, One owner machine with Winch, 19ft Grapple & good rear rubber, Ex Christchurch.

$206,000 + GST 2014 Hyundai R250LC-9 HW Feller Buncher

With Satco 630 Felling head, 6500 hours, 600 mm single Grouser shoes, One Piece bonnet, Full length track guards, heavy duty corner post, Brightwater Engineering ROPs, hydraulic door, Ex Nelson.

$258,000 + GST 2014 Caterpillar 545C Log Skidder

8,000 Hours, Grapple, Winch, 2 new rear Tyres, centralised grease blocks Ex Nelson.

$190,000 + GST

7,000 hours, Grapple, Winch & good Rubber, Ex Wellington.

$225,000 + GST

Contact your Forestry Specialist Today: WHANGAREI Marcus Bourke 027 241 6126 NORTH HARBOUR Charles Dryden 021 751 158 AUCKLAND Colin Saunders 027 593 2661 Byren Ware 027 287 8902 Ben Chissell 027 236 5249

ABE_UsedFE_NZL_DEC.indd 1

HAMILTON Tony Hennessy 027 839 8153 TAUPO Steve Mellar 027 565 3956 MT MAUNGANUI André Muller 027 550 1729 HASTINGS Ben Kendrick 021 658 554

NEW PLYMOUTH & PALMERSTON NORTH Richard Walker 027 553 9216 WELLINGTON Mardi Pritchard 021 335 873 NELSON Chris Jones 027 574 1712

CHRISTCHURCH Nic McLennan 027 275 6252 Steven Varcoe 021 969 323 DUNEDIN Cory Hellyer 027 288 1952 INVERCARGILL Dean Cousins 021 932 246

14/11/2019 12:29:31 pm

NZ LOGGER classified

Hauler Engineering Ltd Darren Hall (Field) 021 365 812 service@hauler.co.nz 65 Whitby Road, Wakefield 7025

LG30134

Brightwater yarder parts + servicing all engineered parts available Brightwater yarder grapples + parts be70 shafts instock $6250 each ,genuine Witchita 19kk pucks $1880 per disc, genuine 19kk bag $2495, genuine coppers $820

Engine + trans setups with chaincases

Yarder clutch convertions with BFG clutches thunderbird 155, 255, 355, TTy70, TMY70-50

tmy70 for sale 5 guy ropes , 855 cummins, bfg main clutch new cab with twin joystick controls, air conditioning comes with 1850 falcon carriage, available march 2020

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66 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

FALCON C L AW SAFE . SIMPLE . PRODUCTIVE

s e c i v r e S y r t s e r Waratah Fo

Floor Stock on Hand Recently traded low hour HTH624C head only. Never fallen a tree.

Available now, balance of new warranty applies.

Call Jason for more information.

0274 864 227 Price $200,000 + GST

Waratah 624C

NEW STOCK NEW

NEW

FL95 Series II Brand new floor stock, Fixed saw box felling head with 1000mm log cut. Ready to replace any existing felling head plug and play. Auto tension main saw $80,000

NEW

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FL85 Series II Brand new Floor stock, small felling head ideal for small 20 ton carrier, auto tension saw $59,000

Extra heavily reinforced model for the toughest jobs in the forest and excavator applications, Strong cushioned cylinder reduces shock loads, ž Saw unit SC300 Integrated mounting of saw motor, No hoses in the saw box, Simple installation Introductory Pricing $38,500

NEW

NEW

Waratah 852 Log Grapple

Waratah 864 Log Grapple

Heavy duty fleet and stack grapple. High pressure cylinders allow mains pressure to be used in grapple circuit.

Price $27,750

Heavy duty fleet and stack grapple. High pressure cylinders allow mains pressure to be used in grapple circuit.

Price $29,550

USED

New Waratah SG360RS Grapple with Supersaw 650S

USED

Waratah 618C Upper and lower delimb knives along with topping saw are standard features on the HTH618C.Short, robust chassis that can easily be positioned in tight spots while thinning or taking on the bent and ugly timber for which this model is famous for.

Price $130,000.00 + GST excluding automation

USED

Rebuilt 626 Bigwood

Waratah 622B

Waratah 625C

Rebuilt 626 Bigwood - New motors, line bore, new pins, hydraulic valve bank reseal, repaint. New TimberRite automation system.

TimberRite Head only. Softwood spec. Ready to go

Refurbished and ready to go. 625C with TimberRite optimising computer, Auto tension main saw and 3/4 top saw.

Price $185,000 + GST

As is price $42,500.00

*prices exclude GST and are valid for a limited period.

Jason Huitema - Customer Support +64274864227 www.waratah.com

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www.mountmachinery.nz

• Genuine high quality 12oz canvas • Manufacturing for over 25 years

SEAT COVERS • Water & rot proof

• Side airbag compatible

Genuine high quality 12oz canvas • Tailored specifically to fit each type of seat Manufacturing for over 20 years • Over 3000 patterns available Water & rot proof Easy to fit - easy• to clean your vehicle investment Protect Side airbag compatible • Overnight available on most products Tailored specifically to fit each delivery type of seat Over 3000 patterns available Protect your vehicle investment Overnight delivery available on most products

Ph: 0800 158 479 sales@blackduck.co.nz

0 158 479 - sales@blackduck.co.nz - www.blackduck.co.nz

Contact: James Peacocke 0274 222 476 Email: info@mountmachinery.nz Mail: PO Box 4254, Mt Maunganui, 3149

Heavy Diesel Imports Ltd CONTACT HEAVY DIESEL IMPORTS LTD

Kelvin Johnson

Ph: 078847942 Mob: 027 307 7701 Email: heavydiesel@xtra.co.nz Te Aroha Waikato

CUMMINS • CATERPILLAR • DETROIT DIESEL SPECIALISING IN REBUILT EXCHANGE ENGINES TO SUIT LOG HAULERS • LOG YARDERS • MADILL THUNDERBIRD • BRIGHTWATER BULLDOZERS • EXCAVATORS 35 years experience building diesel engines. Cummins QSK19 only 1713 hours since new. We have the correct make up Cummins 855 STC and Caterpillar 3406C and Detroit diesel 60 series engines used in Madill-Brightwater-Thunderbird haulers rebuilt - run up and tested - ready to go. We travel anywhere in New Zealand to fit engines if required. We have Caterpillar 3406C built as log hauler spec, but can be changed to suit other Caterpillar applications such as Caterpillar D8N Dozer and others.

We also travel to do jobs such as tune ups - oil leaks or what ever problems you may have on above engines.

Photos of engines and jobs done around New Zealand.

68 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

LG29604

FOR FAST TURN AROUND AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 12 MONTHS WARRANTY ON REBUILT ENGINES

LG29740

• • • • • • • • •

LG29794

• Easy to fit - easy to clean

LG28714

UPER OUGH

NZ LOGGER classified

YC230-8LCF YC310-8LCF POWER BY CUMMINS 6B5.9 HYDRAULICS BY KYB & KPM HIGH & WIDE OPTIONS BASE WEIGHT 22360KG

COMMON COMPONENTS • VALUE • RELIABILITY • POWER • SMOOTH • STRONG

POWER BY CUMMINS 6C8.3 HYDRAULICS BY KYB & KPM HIGH & WIDE OPTIONS BASE WEIGHT 31640KG

0800 344 425 LG29604

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: John Giltrap 0274 329 921 john@diggalink.co.nz

CHRISTCHURCH / TAUPO

www.diggalink.co.nz

LIMITED TIME OFFER

Our gift to you OVER 20% OFF SUBSCRIPTIONS Enter the special coupon code LOGXMAS2019 at the online checkout to receive over 20% off your subscription to NZ Logger magazine. Your subscription includes 11 issues to the best read magazine in the New Zealand Forestry industry. Only available until the 16th of December.

4 SUBSCRIBE EASY WAYS TO-

Post PO Box 112062 Penrose, Auckland 1642

Ph 09 571 3544

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$62

Email accounts@trucker.co.nz

www.alliedpublications.co.nz

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Terms and conditions: Subscription rates and a free copy of Equipment Guide are for NZ orders only and only for NZ Truck and Driver and NZ Logger subscriptions. Rates include GST and postage. For overseas prices please enquire. Christmas promotion availble until Monday 16th December 2019.

AP30279

EXPIRY DATE:

CARD HOLDER NAME:

NZ Log

ARE YOU LOSING TRACTION? GET A GRIP & PULL MORE WOOD WITH A SET OF CLARK TYRE TRACKS ON YOUR FORWARDERS & SKIDDERS WHY YOU NEED TYRE TRACKS ■ Increased traction & pulling power ■ Protection for your tyres ■ Less wheel spinning, less fuel burn ■ Safer on the slopes ■ Better steering ability ■ Less ground disturbance

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AP30279

0800 654 323 sales@west-trak.co.nz www.west-trak.co.nz NZ Logger Advert_alt.indd 1

11/10/19 12:30 PM

NZ LOGGER classified

NOW AVAILABLE FOR HIRE

visit us on

LG26859

www.facebook.com/RWFSfieldservice

Ph: 07 348 0501 Email: Info@rwfs.co.nz Mob: 027 817 9448 Workshop 41 Riri Street, Rotorua

LG29731

Re-grip for winter with our Nokian and Maxxis combo deals.

CHOOSE THE HARDEST WORKERS. Call us on 0800 NOKIAN (0800 665 426) or email info@nokian.nz to find a dealer.

Like Nokian, Maxxis understands how to make tyres stand up to the roughest of conditions and keep working hard, day after day. So this winter, we have combo offers so you can go further not only in the forest, but also on the roads that get you there. Talk to us about your requirements today.

www.maxxis.co.nz

72 NZ LOGGER | December 2019/January 2020

LG25750

www.nokian.co.nz

FOR SALE: Clark F665, 666, F667, Cat 525B Grapple Skidder, JD648G, TJACK 460, 560.

DOZERS: Caterpillar, D4H, D6C, D6H, Komatsu D65 + D85, tie back dozers, D85/21.

Excavators: Caterpillar 320, 322, 325, 330, B,C & D. Hyundai 250/9 Volvo 240C log rigged.

Teebar manufactured and sold. Wheeled loader WA470/3.

Lakeland Heavy Machinery Ltd

Branches now in the NZ LARGEST RANGE OF SKIDDER FOR SALE: Clark 664, 666C, 666B, F67 Grapple Skidders No rth & South Island CHAINS, HEAVIER AND BETTER Komatsu D65/6 and D85/21 log rigged, CAT 936, 950B and Komatsu WA470/ wheeled loaders, buckets or forks.

Forestry Tyre Chains NZ largest raNge Of skidder

Branches noNZ w in LARGEST the North & South IslSTOCKS and

Super Heavy Dutyheavier aNd Better ChaiNs, 35.5x32 - Weight 10000kg 30.5x32 - Weight 950kg 29.5x32 28L Super Heavy Duty 23.5x26 30.5x32 - Weight 950kg

Forestry Tyre Chains

OF DOZER

NZ largest + DIGGER stOCks CHAINS, OfROLLERS dOZer + digger IDLERS, ChaiNs, SPROCKETS rOller available Roller rebuilding/reshells Track press service idlers, Mini Excavator tracks sPrOCkets

35.5x32

Heavy 29.5x32 Duty

30.5x32 -23.5x26 Weight 650kg Heavy Duty Machines

30.5x32 - Weight 650kg

Zaxis 270Standard with teebar. Teebars in stock.

D7H with30.5x32 winch - Weight 365kg Machines

Roller rebuilding/reshells available Track press service available Mini excavator tracks also available

PC350/6 with teebar or grapple DYH with winch

Cat and Komatsu Pumps Komatsu Pumps

WE QUOTE HEAVY TRACK CHAINS We DUTY QuOte heavy duty traCk ChaiNs BONING OUT DISMANTLING 525 CAT 518,CAT 525A B & C, Clark, WRECKING, SKIDDERS, John Deere TJack.

BULLDOZERS, LOADERS, Excavators all makes, CAT EXCAVATORS All Models, 3x 33OD Cat, FOR SALE: Dozer parts

NYLON / FIBRE DRIVE GEARS NYLON / FIBRE DRIVE GEARS

CAT D5B, D6D, D7H D65 & D85 KOMATSU POA TRY US WE ARE FOR WORTH IT! SALE: More Machines On Our Website NEWParts PARTS, CAT, KOMATSU, New Clark off the shelf MACHINES $2476-$6884 + gst.

Grouser Bar From $36 per 3 EXCAVATORS metres HITACHI & SUMI ADJUSTERS DOZERS + DIGGERS Scrap Handling units also 32.5x32 FIRESTONE available Used Tyres RECOIL SPRINGS AVAILABLE 126-136 View Road, PO Box 1976, Rotorua Email: info@heavy-machinery.co.nz • Phone: 07 347 0765 • Fax: 07 349 2325 • Mob 0274 945 886 ROTATING GRAPPLES TO FIT 1 TO 40 TONNES ROTATING GRAPPLES MACHINES $2476 to 30K + gst.

TO FIT 1 TONNE TO 15 TONNE Shears, dredge buckets

126-136 View Road, PO Box 1976, Rotorua Email: info@heavy-machinery.co.nz

• Phone: 07 347 0765 • Fax: 07 349 2325 • Mob 0274 945 886 Check our website for more info www.heavy-machinery.co.nz

Check our website for more info www.heavy-machinery.co.nz

EXCAVATOR WORLD

Hokitika South Island BuLLDOzERS EXCAVATORS SkIDDERS

All NEW Stock

orS ExcAVAt for SAlE

er in 0/3 30 tonn Hitachi EX30 et or grapple. ck bu r de or nice + GST $39,000

LG25750

• • • •

Buckets Cabins final drive Parts grapples

• • • •

Pump Parts ram seal kits rOPs slew drives

ALL MAKES, NEW WINDOWS, NEW DOORS + PANELS, NEW RADIATORS AND COOLERS, ENGINE KITS + GASKETS, COMPUTERS, FINAL DRIVES AND PUMPS

V.1.pdf 1 20-Nov-19 2:57:01 PM

MERRY

Christmas AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

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WISHING YOU AND YOUR FAMILIES A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A SAFE & HAPPY NEW YEAR