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Key points: The woodchip price in Australia has reached a record $US182/bdmt (AU$260) Demand from China now exceeds Japan The woodchip price is up, but export demand for logs is on the slide Australia’s largest processor and exporter of woodfibre, Midway Limited, which has recently acquired a logging and haul business in Western Australia, expects[…]

David Herries from Interpine was able to open the minds of many of the harvesting contractors and forest managers who attended the HarvestTECH 2019 event a couple of weeks ago. The opportunities of using drones operationally in a raft of forestry activities was outlined to those attending. Already in New Zealand, some 118 foresters have[…]

The New Zealand Government is to contribute NZ$19.5 million to establish a Wood Cluster Centre of Excellence in Gisborne. The funding has been announced by Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones, and is part of NZ$27.1 million extra for the region from the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF). Jones said the centre was being developed as[…]

Ghana – with one of the highest deforestation rates in Africa – has become the third country to sign a landmark agreement with the World Bank that rewards community efforts to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Ghana’s five-year Emission Reductions Payment Agreement (ERPA) with the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) Carbon Fund,[…]

Pellet imports to Denmark fell 40.3% y-o-y to 1.2 million tons in first five months of 2019 while average price jumped 14.5% to $154 per ton, according to Eurostat. Pellet imports to Denmark from U.S. decreased 39.8% to 285.9 thousand m3 with import value dropped 32.0% to $50.3 million. Imports from Estonia contracted 26.1% to[…]

John Deere has received approval from the U.S. Department of Labor for its new Registered Apprenticeship Program and is making it available to its Agriculture & Turf and Construction & Forestry dealers. The program will help address a widespread shortage of service technicians, especially in rural areas across the country, by providing dealers with a[…]

DB Breweries is planning to switch its brewery at Timaru onto wood chip by the end of next year as part a plan to halve the group’s emissions by 2030. Thee company operates six breweries around the country. But DB Draught’s plant at Timaru is the biggest user of coal-fired steam and thus the single-[…]

John Deere recently completed the construction of a 7,500 square foot facility in Coal Valley, Illinois to better meet internal training demands, along with supporting customer visits and events. The building is part of the Construction & Forestry Training Campus and includes three classrooms that can be used separately for training purposes, or combined to[…]

New Forests has finalised the acquisition of Hikurangi Forest Farms (HFF), based in Gisborne, New Zealand, on behalf of its investment clients. As part of the ownership transition HFF has been renamed Aratu Forests Limited. A formal launch of the new rebranded business is planned in Gisborne in September 2019. The purchase is one of[…]

OPINION: Billion Trees will fail without Wood First policy (Marty Verry is CEO of Red Stag group, which operates the Southern Hemisphere’s largest sawmill and has investments in over 3,000 ha of forestry, a pre-fabrication plant and property developments.) Would you invest $481 million in growing a product on the assumption that the price and demand[…]