The road to instant volume scaling
WHILE NEW ZEALAND FORESTERS HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT moving to volumetric wood measurement for ages, various systems are already being introduced overseas.
What’s preventing us following suit?
Talk to anyone in the industry and they would love to have instant electronic scaling, based on measuring volume, not weight, as soon as possible. That would allow accurate payments to be made on how much wood is on the back of a truck.
Sounds fair enough, but until a system that measures wood volumes accurately becomes widely used elsewhere, it seems that New Zealand wood buyers are unlikely to make the switch, even though loads vary in weight because of moisture content.
But we are getting closer. And two overseas systems showcased at the Woodflow 2018 conference in Rotorua last month certainly drew considerable interest.
The Woodtech Logmeter, made in Chile, has recently been successfully trialled in Tasmania, where its laser-scanning technology is proving to be highly accurate for measuring Eucalyptus logs grown for either chip or whole log export.
The trial began in 2014 and involved installation of 3D laser measuring structures at key locations where trucks would drive though at a set pace and the wood volumes measured, providing an instant readout on the volume and biometric characteristics of the load. The results have encouraged Tasmanian forest company, Forica, to continue to pursue volume measurement, as there are potential savings to be made in transport costs by not having to rely on weighing. Woodtech is looking to interest New Zealand forest companies and log transporters.
Meanwhile, Estonian company, Timbeter, has developed a system that allows foresters to capture logs in roadside wood stacks or on trucks on their smart phone / tablet, which then uses special photographic recognition technology to measure each log and calculate its volume.
It provides quick reporting on harvested wood volumes and can even be used to identify defects in logs.
Potential New Zealand customers can download a free trial on line and then pay a yearly licence fee if they want to continue using it.
NZL