Business North July / August 2021

| 59 In total, the Northland region embraces 190,000 hectares of plantation pine and harvests just under 3.9 million tonnes of logs each year. FORESTRY Northland Wood Council For Northland logging company Grimmer Contracting Ltd, a willingness to be innovative and invest in machinery and people has complemented hard work and a practical ‘can-do’ approach throughout its journey. Established in 2002 by Jordon Grimmer when an opportunity arose to work for a key supplier, Grimmer Contracting commenced life as a small ground based logging crew with basic machinery including an excavator, bulldozer and skidder. “Over the irst few years we evolved to a larger ground based crew and became involved in mechanised falling,” says Mark Grimmer, who joined his father in the business in 2003. The company’s next major mechanisation milestone occurred in 2008 when a cable hauler was purchased and cable logging commenced. In 2013 Grimmer Contracting was one of the irst in Northland to adopt tethered falling using winch assist felling. “We were able to support felling machines with cables and put them into quite steep country that would normally be hand-felled with men and chain saws. There wasn’t any textbook on how to do it, so we asked a few people and built our own machine.” In 2015 Grimmer Contracting bought a brand new hauler out of Canada, taking advantage of a new logging opportunity. “Over the last eight years there has been a fair amount of innovation within the industry and the mechanical side of the business has continued to take on more importance, signi icantly reducing the manual labour side of logging.” Grimmer Contracting now operates two mechanised logging crews including a cable Investment pays off logging crew with cable hauler, felling machine, processer, three excavators and forwarders. A ground based crew operates a felling machine, a Waratah processing machine, three grapple diggers, a bulldozer and a forwarder that carries processed logs from stump to roadside landing. Operating throughout Northland, Grimmer Contracting is currently logging exclusively for Hancock Forest Management. Mark says in the past the company has operated closer to the Auckland region and looking to the future sees opportunity to once again work further a ield. In addition to Mark and his father, eighteen people are employed across the two crews and since 2014 a Health & Safety Manager has played an integral role in the business. Focused on both work related training and health & safety training, all sta have their own personalised training plans overseen by the Health & Safety Manager. “We’ve spent a lot of time establishing good crews with good people operating good machinery with good productivity and a good safety record. Our goal is to maintain that. We do a lot of training with our sta and want to keep that high-level of people, machinery and innovation going. Complementing the logging work, Grimmer Contracting has also been involved in land development work for various owners o and on for over ten years. “That work involves land clearing for forestry or returning harvested forestry land back to pastoral land,’ says Mark. “The work is more bulldozer work and dad is heavily involved in that. The work has been quite steady over the last three years and there is more coming up next year.” LANDPREPARATION JordonGrimmer - Ph. 021 767 081 FORESTRYHARVESTING MarkGrimmer - Ph. 021 322 165