Trees get time to grow
A council-owned forestry company on the verge of running out of mature pine trees is to take a seven-year break to let new trees develop.
The ‘‘void’’ in harvest, starting in 2020, means Marlborough Regional Forestry will miss out on $4-5 million (at current log prices) a year, but a contractor for the company said it ‘‘had to happen’’.
Merrill and Ring NZ managing director Kyle Heagney said the council-owned operation did not have enough space to grow enough trees for a continuous supply of logs.
However, even though the brakes would be put on 3400 hectares of logging area, Heagney said there would be no shortage of forestry work in the region.
To compensate for the break in harvesting, the Marlborough Regional Forestry board ‘‘accelerated’’ the volume of logs to be harvested before 2020.
Board chairman Gerald Hope said an extra ‘‘logging gang’’ from the North Island was drafted in before Christmas.
‘‘We’ve ended up with about a 20 per cent increase in logging volume because of that extra manpower. The important thing is we decided to grab the money while the price is strong,’’ Hope said.
The seven-year break in log harvesting was already budgeted for in the council’s long-term plan, he said.
The Marlborough District Council owned 88.62 per cent of Marlborough Regional Forestry and the remaining 11.38 per cent was owned by the Kaiko¯ ura District Council. Money from the logs harvested before 2020 would be added to the council’s reserve funds, Hope said. They expected a net profit of about $5m this year.
‘‘I think it was wise to get money in the reserve funds. The thing about forestry is it was set up for the purpose of holding rates,’’ Hope said.
Hope said planning decisions in the early 1990s were the main reason for the void.
‘‘Whenever MRF log, they replant the land, what happened in the early 1990s and what they should have been doing was buying land to increase plantings to maintain supply of wood, but they didn’t buy.
‘‘In that early 90s period there was a mini recession as well, they may have been careful not to overcommit capital or land,’’ Hope said.
Heagney said the oldest trees owned by Marlborough Regional Forestry were being harvested now.
‘‘We harvest trees that are around 25 to 30-years-old, that’s the age that they mature.
‘‘Price of logs are [at] record highs at the moment, there are 15 different grades and the A grade export logs have peaked at $145 a JAS [per cubic metre in the Japanese Agricultural Standard],’’ Heagney said.
Forestry contract workers would move on to other forests in the region, he said. Marlborough had about 71,000ha of forestry land.
‘‘This is not a big deal, this is just one owner, there is no detriment to the industry, it’s just that particular owner has a gap and it’s strictly due to how many trees they planted 25 to 30 years ago.
‘‘We’ll continue to replant harvested areas and they will be thinning at age 10 and prune at age 7. We roughly plant 1000 stems a hectare and our final crop will be about 500 so we thin out the runts, the deformed trees, just the bad ones,’’ Heagney said.
A council spokeswoman said the revenue gathered from Marlborough Regional Forestry helped the council for a number of projects over the years.
Some of the projects included the Picton sewerage network in the 1990s, the Renwick sewerage network in the early 2000s, paying for some of the Marlborough Convention Centre and the Alfred St parking building.
‘‘The important thing is we decided to grab the money while the price is strong.’’ Gerald Hope