Forest Owners Identify Big Transport Savings

29 January 2008
Australia’s transport sector enjoyed much lower road taxes and much heavier payloads than its New Zealand counterpart, the chief executive of the NZ Forest Owners Association (NSFOA) David Rhodes said.
For many decades, forest owners had operated vehicles with heavier payloads on their private roading networks, Rhodes said. “So we are well aware of the efficiencies involved, as well as the true cost of building and maintaining roads to support them.”
He said forest owners, who were major users of the public roads that linked forests to mills and ports, were concerned about the cost and lost productivity imposed on the industry by the current levels of road-user charges and constraints on vehicle weights and dimension.
“Each year, 31 million tonnes of logs, wood products and paper are transported by road, making forest products the largest road freight category in New Zealand, outside of general freight,” Rhodes said.
Late last year forest owners welcomed a Cabinet decision to investigate the introduction of a permit system for heavier vehicles on selected roads and highways.
The forest industry’s submission to the review of the heavy vehicle rule was jointly prepared by the NZFOA and the Logging Truck Safety Council (LTSC) and also represented the interests of distributors of processed forest products.
“We are now looking to work closely with officials in developing and implementing the proposed controlled permit system,” Rhodes said.

NZ Forest Owners Welcome Nats Blue-Green Policy

Forest owners in New Zealand have welcomed a National Party commitment to abolish the Government’s 10% deforestation cap.
Commenting on the National’s Blue-Green Vision policies for this year’s general election, NZ Forest Owners Association (NZFOA) chief executive David Rhodes said the cap was counterproductive to both the economy and the environment.
"The cap works like a punitive tax and is designed to lock pre-Kyoto plantations into forestry in perpetuity,” Rhodes said.
“Under current proposals, forest owners won’t even be able to harvest a forest on land better suited to farming and replant on erosion-prone hill country elsewhere without incurring the tax. This is not going to deliver sustainable land use.”
Rhodes said economic and environmental policies were becoming increasingly intertwined. Society’s goals of cleaner water and lower carbon and nitrogen emissions invariably came with big cost implications for land-users.
He said the community, not forest owners, should carry the cost of retaining existing trees in an uneconomic location to meet New Zealand’s commitments to Kyoto because the community was the sole beneficiary.
The principles involved were no different to public works such as roads.
“If the country is to get a benefit from land in private hands, the owners should be left unharmed, as provided for in the Public Works Act,” Rhodes said.
“Whether it’s carbon in forests, which we do want, or nitrogen in Taupo, which we don’t want, there are costs involved. The fair allocation of these costs is a complex issue where greater consensus between political parties is needed.”
Rhodes said the National’s Blue-Green Vision was a helpful contribution to dealing with forestry and other land-use policies in a positive way.
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