For timber processors battling to stay in the black, selecting the right machinery can make or break the business. The challenge TIMFIN Limited managing director Warwick Lee set Lakeland Steel Products 18 months ago was to build a fingerjointer that would go twice as fast as the one the company built for him back in the 90s, allowing him to go from two shifts to one without dropping production.
The western red cedar business is in trouble – serious trouble. Supply from British Columbia’s biggest sawmills has been at a standstill since July when Canada’s beleaguered coastal lumber workers went on strike demanding better working conditions.
Has the FSC dealt a killer blow to New Zealand’s most famous icon, the kiwi, by rejecting the advice of its own expert panel on pesticides? Michael Dover reports on the organisation’s latest clash with the forest industry.
The vultures are again circling over the New Zealand log export trade as it battens down to weather yet another international crisis – partly the result of its own actions, or lack of them, as Tony Neilson writes.
Earlier in the year we received a lot of mail (not all of it complimentary) when we reported on the need to rationalise the number of wood industry organizations in Australia. And, as Jim Bowden writes, it now looks like that will happen by natural attrition.
A phenomenal resurgence in demand for old timber – recycled and rejuvenated – is occurring on both sides of the Tasman. But, as Penelope Lawry discovered, the two markets are very different.
The level of management apathy towards training has come as something of a surprise to Ian Boyd, the man who came out of semi-retirement to head up FITEC – New Zealand’s biggest industry training organisation.
