Japanese-owned Pan Pac Forest Products has completed the NZ$24million redevelopment of its Milburn sawmill which is now fully operational and staffed.
The Milburn plant, south of Dunedin, near Milton, has some of the newest and most environmentally efficient equipment on site, from its fuel source, to air emission cleansing to its “latest technology” kiln drying facilities.
Milburn uses 100% radiata pine to mill appearance grade lumber, at present solely for export to Asian customers. The more than year-long redevelopment has doubled output from 50,000cum of lumber a year to 100,000cum, with plenty of capacity to spare.
Pan Pac has been operating in Hawke’s Bay for 44 years and 30 months ago bought part of the former Southern Cross Forest Products company out of receivership, which is its first foray into Otago. With minimal loss to production, the dry sorting equipment from the Milton plant was moved to Milburn, and other new sawmilling equipment installed, all in large sheds.
“Really, at 100,000cum we are in the niche market area. Output of 500,000 cu m has become the commercial industry standard,” Pan Pac managing director Doug Ducker said. Pan Pac’s operations manager at Milburn, Blair Watson, said logs were sourced from around Otago, from small forest holdings and also City Forests, Matariki and Wenita. Mr Watson said the kiln was the largest one of its kind in the southern hemisphere.
Mr Ducker said emission issues at the former Milton site had been overcome with the installation of a $1.5million electrostatic precipitator, which is the final cleanser for emissions. The filtration system removes fine particles from gases using an induced electrostatic charge. The plant uses just 5ha of the total 37ha of land around it.
Mr Ducker said expansion was part of the future plans. The new plant itself was operating at about 50% of capacity at the moment. He expected that in 10 to 15 years there would be a large amount of 1990s-planted Otago forests “coming on stream”, largely from small forest owners.
Source: odt.co.nz
