Steel prices are through the roof in Australia and the timber industry should be rubbing its hands with glee, particularly over the opportunities for a greater share of the large-span structural market. But there are concerns about the industry preparedness, as JIM BOWDEN reports.
A plantation seedling crisis is looming in New Zealand, with nursery production down two-thirds and land prices forcing ageing owners to consider exiting the business. PETER HARINGTON looks at the implications.
It seems that New Zealand has an acid rain problem – or at least those parts of the country downwind of intensive dairy farming do, as science writer BILL DYCK reports.
These are turbulent times for the Labour Government’s beleaguered Emissions Trading Bill, perceived in New Zealand as grossly unfair and unworkable by the forestry industry, better than nothing by the Greens and incomprehensible by the general public. MICHAEL DOVER reports.
The Papua New Guinean forest industry has called in the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) to investigate ‘unsubstantiated’ claims by Greenpeace and other ENGOs that timber traders are operating illegally in the country.
Some years ago a Fletcher executive coined the phrase ‘The Wall of Wood’ – a reference to an expected spike in production from New Zealand’s plantations and much was written about the huge challenge of finding markets for that wood.
As Australasian governments are still kicking the tyres of their respective biofuels strategies, Inwood’s bioenergy specialist MICHAEL DOVER takes a look at SunFuel, a superior kind of biodiesel, which has its technological roots in pre-unification communist East Germany.
