Tenon at Taupo, New Zealand sourced a new edger line with advanced technology to provide visual grading capability for its high-value shop and moulding products. Tenon describes the operation as the country’s largest single site producer of defect-free, appearance grade radiata pine products. The output includes lumber, solid lineal mouldings and clear pine boards, with the majority exported to the …
Canadian investment in A&E
Leading Canadian Sawmill Machinery Manufacturer TS Manufacturing has recently acquired a majority shareholding in Automation & Electronics NZ Ltd and its AEUSA division based in North Carolina. The acquisition strengthens TS Controls division in the North American market by adding additional controls support combined with AE Optimization technology. A&E is a well-established company with a 33-year history in the Australasian …
New wood treatment plants fully automated
IWT-Moldrup, a Danish company that manufactures wood treatment operations, has in recent years supplied a number of semi-automatic wood treatment plants to Australia for treating 30,000 m3 treated timber per annum. Some plants have been delivered ready for expansion to fully automatic material handling at a later time. Many local companies did not want to go to the fully automated …
Mississippi State develops smartphone app to test lumber
Determining the stiffest piece of lumber is now easier with a new smartphone app created by scientists in Mississippi State University’s Forest and Wildlife Research Center. Called “Smart Thumper,” the app uses soundwaves or vibrations to determine stiffness, a quality that relates to strength, for individual pieces of lumber. Developer Dan Seale, professor in MSU’s Department of Sustainable Bioproducts, …
Lessons from workplace H&S fine
Two similar health and safety failings within three months have cost Rotorua timber company Claymark Limited over NZ$680,000 in fines, reparations and costs. WorkSafe, New Zealand’s primary workplace health and safety regulator, says that one serious injury on a company’s watch is bad enough, but that a second in close succession shows an unacceptable approach to worker safety. Claymark was …
Australia’s largest continuous timber kiln opened
The biggest single capacity continuous timber kiln in Australia was opened in Dardanup earlier this month. The Wespine-operated facility has the capacity to dry 180,000cu/m of timber per year, which allowed for the replacement of five existing kilns that operated with older technology. It will allow the timber producer to cut its gas usage by 40 per cent and lower …
Kaituna Sawmill – a good look inside a sawmill
A sawmill tucked away in a forested corner near Blenheim at the top of the South Island, New Zealand, is not so quietly producing a large chunk of the timber used for the country’s houses, decks, fences and furniture. Nelson Forests harvests about 1.2 million cubic metres of raw logs, and Kaituna Sawmill produces 65,000 cubic metres of high-grade, market-ready …
Timberlink invests in new primary saw line
Timberlink Australia is investing in a new saw line, horizontal shape saw, and edger lines at its Tarpeena, South Australia site. The company operates three sawmills at Bell Bay (Tasmania), Blenheim (New Zealand) and Tarpeena (South Australia) that manufacture plantation structural pine products. The project includes log infeed, log turners, Precision Geometric Log Rotation (PGLR) system, slew and skew extended …
Södra announces its first robot employee
Södra welcomes Clerk, the company’s first digital robot employee. Södra was founded in 1938 and is the largest forest-owner association in Sweden, with a membership of close to 52,000 forest owners. The new robot, Clerk is a software robot that works in six departments and uses its expertise in everyday, repetitive and time-consuming tasks. “Digitalisation is creating a myriad of …