If you need a clear demonstration of how safety conscious harvesting contractors have become in the past decade, the sale of the 150th Falcon Winch-Assist machine provides convincing evidence. It took just seven years to reach that milestone and manufacturer, Nelson-based DC Equipment, says demand is currently at an all-time high. The shift to mechanised tree falling on steep slopes …

The log carrier Noble Island, with a LOA of 199.9 metres and summer DWT of 61,115 tons made calls to Tasmania’s Burnie and Hobart ports in early October. The arrival of the Ultramax vessel was the culmination of the work of Braemar ACM who successfully brokered the charter between Wood Based Products (WBP) and the Pacific Basin Shipping Limited. A …

Two European pension funds, APG Asset Management (APG) on behalf of its Dutch pension fund client ABP, and UK’s Pension Protection Fund (PPF), have agreed to purchase Sinotrans New Zealand Limited’s (Sinotrans NZ) shareholding in Wenita Forest Products Limited (Wenita). Wenita is the largest producer of timber in Otago, New Zealand, across almost 30,000 hectares of sustainably managed forests. With …

Major changes are looming for the New Zealand forestry sector as the deluge of raw log exports fades amid dwindling supplies and demands increase from the building industry and other users. An industry report by investment house Forsyth Barr suggests the mainstay of the industry, log exports, will peak and then drop by more than a third within a decade. …

The Australian Forest Contractors Association’s (AFCA) Forestry Haulage Gap Analysis System will receive key funding through the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator’s (NHVR) Heavy Vehicle Safety Initiative (HVSI), supported by the Federal Government. The Forestry Haulage Gap Analysis System will allow for industry participants to effectively understand their relative transport risks resulting from the industry-endorsed Forestry Log Haulage Registered Code of …

Iknow Machinery, Nippon Paper Industries and Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha have conducted a cargo handling trial of the world’s first automatic crane operation system, which was developed for wood-chip carriers by Iknow Machinery. The trial was performed at Tomakomai port (Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan) in late August and enabled the three companies to confirm the effect of the system to reduce …

The Vienne Test System, followed by the use of simulators, results in productive operators being selected and their subsequent learning curve being quicker with less machine damage. Researchers used people with no simulator or logging machine experience to test whether applicable aptitude tests, such as the Vienne Test System, could successfully select operators that would be productive machine operators. The …

Larry Bolduc has been a truck driver for more than 25 years and is now the head of the family business Transport Raoul Bolduc in Girardville, Que., in the Saguenay/Lac-St-Jean region of Canada. He also launched another business in parallel, called Électrocamion. The business plan is to convert forestry or mining trucks into hybrid diesel-electric vehicles, whether they are new …