56 | Growth predicted for forestry sector One of the country’s biggest privately owned timber harvesting companies, DG Glenn Logging has 120 staff harvesting mostly for Pan Pac Forest Products, the biggest forest-owner in Hawke’s Bay. FORESTRY DG Glenn Logging T T Hugh de Lacy “The medium-term outlook for the global market for New Zealand-style softwoods like radiata pine is pretty bright too, especially as timber becomes a more accepted construction option on multi-storey buildings.” Reduced export demand, especially from the critical Chinese market, coinciding with high input costs and a fall in domestic construction, has left the New Zealand forestry industry navigating a tricky path, but Hawke’s Bay giant DG Glenn Logging continues to thrive on the challenges. “The market certainly has its ups and downs, and it would be fair to say we’re in a bit of a trough at the moment, but the bigger picture of a growing global market offers some reassurance,” says DG Glenn Logging’s operations manager, Rob Scurr. “Between our harvesting operations, our workshop and our transport division we’ve got nearly 120 staff, and we’ve been around as a company since 1986, so we’ve got the staff and the plant and the management with a proven record of survival. “There are a lot of mixed signals from the global market at the moment, but overall the outlook is for growth in the near term, though that would need to be reflected in the Chinese market for it to have much of an effect on New Zealand,” Rob says. “The medium-term outlook for the global market for New Zealand-style softwoods like radiata pine is pretty bright too, especially as timber becomes a more accepted construction option on multi-storey buildings.” The global market for wood and timber products last year was a smidgeon under $US1000 billion, and is projected to grow to $US1250b by 2030. One of the country’s biggest privately owned timber harvesting companies, DG Glenn Logging has 120 staff harvesting mostly for Pan Pac Forest Products, the biggest forest-owner in Hawke’s Bay, with 35,000ha now into their second generation of production. Most of the plantation land itself belongs to local iwi. Pan Pac’s Whirinaki mill, owned by the Japanese company OJI, is New Zealand’s largest producer of appearance-grade lumber, and it also turns out bleached chemi thermo mechanical pulp (BCTMP) – 850 tonnes a day of it – and 450,000t of wood chip a year. Pan Pac has its own fleet of trucks to cart the logs to Whirinaki from its Mohaka, Esk, Kaweka and Gwavas forests, but DG Glenn Logging handles the harvesting and transport of the logs within the forests. The company operates through three divisions, the main one being the logging division, whose operations extend beyond Hawke’s Bay and up the East Coast, operating a fleet of more than 100 vehicles as well as harvesting equipment. The logging operations are backed up by DG Transport, the heavy haulage division operating two Scania R730s with low-loader trailers. The third division is the workshop at the Onekawa headquarters, which has a staff of eight working full-time to repair and maintain the huge inventory of equipment. DG Glenn Logging was started in 1986 by Dennis Glenn, who had a silviculture business preparing land for forest planting, and then decided to get in on the other end of the forestry cycle. In an industry once notorious for its accident rate, DG Glenn Logging has been at the forefront of developments in foresters’ health and safety. Your Local Insurance Brokers Come to us for personal service and quality advice: Level 1, PwC Centre, 6 Albion St, Napier 4110 Level 2, River Oaks Mews, 74 Grey St, Gisborne 4010 0800 683 557 Business Domestic Rural
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