FORESTWOOD 2018
Every two years the movers and shakers of the New Zealand forestry world come together to plot the course of the industry at the ForestWood conference. The 2018 edition took place in Wellington last month amid concerns over log supply to local mills and discussion about the industry’s future role.
WITH 30-TO-40% OF DELIVERED LOG COSTS BEING CONTRIBUTED by transport, there’s plenty of incentive to make cartage more efficient.
And this year’s Woodflow conferences running in Rotorua and Melbourne will be focusing on the very latest technologies for moving wood from the forest through to the log yard, processing plant, port or market.
The two events, which take place in June, will highlight new initiatives and operating practices being employed by leading companies to improve planning, logistics and operations within the wood supply chain.
Held every two years by the Forest Industry Engineering Association (FIEA), they are expected to draw plenty of interest.
FIEA Director, Brent Apthorp, says: “At the last Woodflow events run two years ago, we had over 250 harvesting contractors, wood transport operators and planners attending.
“For the Woodflow events this June, key industry and tech providers from Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Sweden, Hong Kong and Estonia have already been confirmed, exhibition booths are being snapped up and relevant industry associations are lending their support.”
Conference delegates this year will also have the opportunity of registering for two pre-conference workshops; Cloud-based Operations Management and Transport Planning. Both are free to Woodflow 2018 conference delegates and will run on the afternoon before each conference.
“One of the key themes being addressed this year are new innovations around log scaling, measurement and tracking,” says Mr. Apthorp.
“Both vision and scanning technologies for volumetric measurement of logs and woodchips have recently been evaluated. We’ll hear from the company installing the first 3D laser measurement system in Australasia (and SE Asia) to measure the solid volume of bulk hardwood logs on truck, we’ll catch up on progress being made on an Australian code of practice for the volumetric measurement of logs through scanning and hear from a European company who have developed a system for measuring and reporting stacked log volumes using a smartphone App.”
Companies at the forefront of innovations like Scania in Hong Kong, the LOTS Group of Sweden, Forestal Mininco of Chile, JRP Solutions of Canada and New Zealand’s own Zero Emission Vehicles, with be joined by local forestry companies including FCNSW, Forico, Nelson Forests, HQPlantations and OneFortyOne Plantations to share their experiences.
Woodflow 2018 runs on June 20-21 in Melbourne and then on June 26-27 in Rotorua. For more information go to www.woodflow.events.
NZL