38 | Rotorua: Red Stag Timber REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Red Stag a sawmilling success story The company also owns the mountain biking carpark land that accesses the forest in Rotorua, and has developed world class facilities alongside the council. Under the ownership and leadership of the Verry family, a strong management team, and a highly motivated workforce, Red Stag Timber is the biggest turnaround story in the sawmilling sector, producing an annual turnover in excess of $250 million. Group CEO Marty Verry says, it is probably be one of the largest turnaround stories in New Zealand’s company history. The company’s roots go back to 1940 when the sawmill was opened by the Government to demonstrate how to mill radiata pine. In the 1990s it went into private ownership and then into receivership. In 2003 Marty and his father bought the business, and began operating under the Red Stag brand. “At that stage it was producing around 180,000 cubic metres of timber per year, which has grown to 625,000 cubic metres,’ says Marty. “We now employ about 400 staff, including contractors full time on site. So, Red Stag Timber has added one and a half times the staff since 2003, but produces three times the volume. “That’s productivity and that’s what manufacturing in New Zealand needs to get to. For years we just reinvested everything back into the business to get it back into a very strong competitive position, with economies of scale. “We’ve probably reinvested the best part of $200 - $250 million dollars to make it the largest capacity sawmill in the southern hemisphere.” When the Verry family took hold of the reins of the business in 2003, they inherited a very strong management team from Fletchers, who had been operating the sawmill when it was part of a joint venture with the Chinese Government’s investment arm. That team brought with them strong business acumen, managerial expertise, processes, policies and intrinsic knowledge, providing the bedrock needed to support the Verrys in the early days, and throughout. “We broke the business out of a corporate structure and backed the management team to focus the operation on structural framing timber. In 2005/2006 Carter Holt started buying the other Fletchers structural mills, along with other independent structural mills and became very dominant in the sawmilling sector. The non-Carters merchants viewed Red Stag as the counter weight to that Carter Holt domination and backed our growth, to diversify their exposure. When Carter Holt Richard Loader turned off supply to the ITMs, Mitre 10s and Bunnings’ early last year, that was exactly the scenario people who had been buying from Red Stag for years were avoiding.” Located just a few kilometres south of Rotorua, Red Stag Timber consists of a new USNR Tandem-Quadsaw sawmill line, with associated timber processing operations for kiln drying, planing, treating and remanufacturing. Each year a million tonnes of radiata pine and Douglas-fir logs are locally sourced and processed. “Our focus continues to be on framing timber, but we also do a lot of outdoor retaining and structural timber, treated to H3.2 and above. “Our markets are predominantly New Zealand, with about 25% exported to Australia and the Pacific Islands. We target the housing market and have about 28% market share now. Lower grade timber gets used for pallets and packaging in New Zealand and goes into Asia as well.” With an increasing global interest in timber products, based on its sustainability credentials, Red Stag commissioned a new engineered wood products factory last year and now produces products like CLT (cross-laminated timber) and glulam timber. “These are the products the world is adopting for use in bigger structures. The industry is gearing up to produce more of those mass-timber products to go into large scale and high-rise buildings. “Regulation is coming through the pipeline, to page 40 that to get a building code of compliance, you’re going to have to measure and cap the amount of embodied carbon in the materials used in a building. “That will be announced later this year and implemented in 2024. Timber is a way to meet the regulations, because you’re not only avoiding the emissions from steel and concrete, you’re also sequestering carbon. If the base material is sequestering so much carbon, that will provide designers a lot more flexibility in the other materials they use.” Complementing the sustainability merits of wood products, is the biophilic design advantages of natural materials like wood. International & Coastal Shipping | Air Freight | Import Devaning & Export Packing | Customs Brokerage | Warehousing 0800 242 674 | www.championfreight.co.nz | team@championfreight.co.nz
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