Welcome to the latest issues of HarvestTECH.News.
After years of progress, electric heavy trucks are finally on the road in this part of the world. Australian log harvest and haulage company, Fennell Forestry, are converting one of their diesel-powered prime movers to run with a fully electric battery operating system. This is the first for Australia and only the second conversion in the world. This follows last month’s story on NZ ‘s first diesel-electric harvesting machine.
Vovo has now sold around 1,000 heavy electric trucks worldwide. Demand is only increasing and the company expects that, by 2030, over 50% of trucks sold will be electric.
One key concern with electric vehicles has been battery life and the current lack of infrastructure to support charging. For Fennell Forestry, their electric truck runs for 4 hours and uses a swap-and-go battery system, which only takes 5 minutes to change. New research out of the US promises to dramatically speed up the charging of batteries, with the potential to bring down charge times to 10 minutes using existing technologies.
In another technological advance, the latest model of Yamaha’s ‘heavy-lifting’ drone can support loads of up to 50kgs. Moving machine parts, tools and other resources around hard-to-reach terrain just got a little easier – and far quicker.
And finally, Safetree has supplied a lot of useful resources for mental wellbeing within the sector. In addition, the page includes a great video on Canterbury contractor Tony Brand and how they have integrated safety into their business. One of New Zealand forestry’s goals is to improve its safety record and Safetree has been an important initiative.
Check out these stories and much more below. Enjoy this month’s issue.
Remember, please send through any stories or video you want us to pass onto the wider wood harvesting and log transport community.
Stories this issue:
- Volvo marks series production on heavy-duty EVs
- Fennell Forestry commissions world’s 2nd electric log truck
- Mental wellbeing resources from Safetree
- Next generation harvesting head control
- Forest360 NZ log export market update
- Yamaha’s beefed-up unmanned helicopter can carry up to 50 kg
- Super-fast 10-minute electric car charging
- Using biomass to take cane trains beyond diesel
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