WoodTECH Update – Issue 7

Welcome to the latest update for Australasia’s sawmilling and wood manufacturing community. First off, we’re looking forward to meeting up with many of you from both sides of the Tasman over the next couple of weeks. The first leg of the WoodTECH 2018 series starts in Melbourne next week and in the following week for New Zealand. As anticipated, it’s going to be a full house at both venues. Already, over 300 have signed up for the tech series on wood manufacturing and dry-mill operations.

In addition to record numbers of local companies turning up, most major technology and equipment providers from around the globe are also involved. This includes companies specialising in wood scanning and board optimisation, finger-jointing, cross cutting and ripping, timber gluing and laminating, timber machining, kiln drying, timber finishing and material handling operations. Late registrations can still be made on the event website, www.woodtech.events.

Featured in this WoodTECH News issue are a raft of good news stories on recent announcement on local investment into wood processing operations. This week, Timberlink has announced that they’ve given the green light to AU$100 million being invested in their Australian sawmilling business. This includes the Tarpeena operation in South Australia and the Bell Bay site in Tasmania. The major upgrades are planned to take place over the next three years and are expected to increase the wood processing capacity of the company by over 15%.

A consortium of forestry companies, including Boral, has also begun developing a new AU$20 million high-tech log optimising facility at Eden, NSW. This is designed to extract short logs from existing pulpwood streams to boost the volume of the quota sawlog component. Additionally, processes that will use the sawdust and residues from the sawmill and existing wood chipping operations are also being investigated.

We’ve also included a look (short story plus video) at one of New Zealand’s largest stand-alone wood manufacturing operations of KLC that was founded back in 1997. It’s located in the centre of the North Island, at Kaingaroa Village just South of Rotorua.

Finally, we’ve included a number of insights into some high-tech equipment relevant to local wood processing operations including; wearable robot exoskeletons that are being designed to help workers take a load off their legs (literally) and news on the first mass timber panel that’s been constructed at a US manufacturing plant made entirely out of Structural Composite Lumber.

Enjoy this month’s read and if you’d like to contribute, please make contact. We look forward to meeting up with many of you at the WoodTECH 2018 series over the next couple of weeks.