Logging firm ships young pines to Shanghai
Northland wood processors are upset overseas companies are taking local trees before New Zealand-owned businesses have a chance to access them, and shipping unmilled logs straight to Shanghai.
Local processors and China Forestry Group will meet tomorrow to discuss plans for the forestry block next to the Treaty Grounds at Waitangi.
And NZ First’s Whangarei candidate, Shane Jones, said he was concerned about the activities of Chinese Government-owned China Forest Products, which recently purchased cutting rights on the Waitangi estate.
In the Rototuna forest near Dargaville, it had been harvesting and exporting pine trees that were too young to be used by New Zealand firms.
Jones feared ‘‘a Beijing tree massacre at Waitangi’’ that would deny this country timber needed for house-building, and ultimately drive Kiwis on to the dole.
Pine forests are not usually felled until they are at least 28 years old, when the wood is strong enough to be used for construction timber. But it can still be used before that time to make low-grade plywood and timber for concrete boxing.
Brian Stanley, chair of the Wood Processors and Manufacturers Association, said China had started to look internationally for wood because of problems with its own forests. Chinese manufacturers would take 20-year-old trees, but this denied New Zealand processors access to older timber they could use.
Steve Walker, chief operations officer at China Forestry Group NZ Company, said he could understand the concerns.
Around 40 per cent of its total harvest from Rototuna and forests on the Pouto Peninsula was sold to domestic markets. This included almost all the high-value timber.
‘‘The balance is exported. New Zealand mills in Northland either do not buy some of the grades we produce or do but for well less than the export price.’’
Since last year China Forestry Group and PF Olsen, which manages Rototuna, had been slowing the harvest there to let it grow, and were buying other older forests so local contractors still had work.
Bruce Larsen, manager of timber company Northpine, said there were wider concerns that more wood was being taken out of Northland than was sustainable.