| 71 T T Richard Loader Strength in diverse forestry operations PF Olsen looks after 160,000 hectares of plantation forestry throughout New Zealand. PF Olsen FORESTRY Employing 135 staff, hundreds of contracting crews and providing employment opportunities for thousands of forestry workers within those crews, PF Olsen looks after 160,000 hectares of plantation forestry throughout New Zealand. Regional offices are based in, Waipapa, Whangarei, Rotorua, Gisborne, Napier, Masterton, Wellington, Whanganui, Nelson, Blenheim, Christchurch, Timaru and Dunedin, ensuring they cover the entire country. The company also owns two seed orchards and two nurseries, and around 40 staff are also based throughout Australia, involved in forest management as well as agricultural management. Roles within FF Olsen range from harvest managers, forest managers, forestry consultants, environmental specialists and GIS mapping specialists through to administrative support staff. As a forest management company PF Olsen is involved in all aspects of forestry from land preparation, forest establishment, silviculture, harvesting, log cartage and marketing, project analysis, feasibility analysis, and resource consenting. “We have a mix of corporate and non-corporate forests,” says Scott Downs, Director of Sales and Marketing. “Our clients/forest owners include overseas investors, Councils, iwi groups, partnerships, individual farmers and investors. We have the most diverse range of clients.” Scott acknowledges that PF Olsen’s strength is in the diversity of its forestry operations, which provides several different streams of revenue, so that in the event of one market slowing others may be less affected. “Our resilience comes from that, and helps us to navigate through some of these tougher times that we are currently experiencing.” While typically harvesting in excess of two million tonnes of logs per year, flattened export and domestic markets have seen a significant reduction in PF Olsen’s cut over the last twelve months. “In excess of 90% of New Zealand forest exports go to China and so that economy is very important to us. The Chinese government has tightened up on its financial policy, and introduced policy to reduce real estate speculation, which has impacted new residential construction. During their hot sticky months of June, July, August construction slows right down, and they use 60,000 to 70,000 cubic metres a day. Two or three years ago, in their peak building season in the cooler months, they would typically use double that amount. But the low is now the average of what it has been used all year. So while the Chinese are still wanting softwood and New Zealand wood, in general, we are having to adjust to a much lower level of demand which has been very tough on our business partners — the contractor workforce.” On average PF Olsen sells between 50% - 60% of its cut into the domestic sawmills, though the actual percentage varies significantly region-by-region. For example, in Nelson 80% of PF Olsen’s cut is fed into local mills, while in Gisborne limited mill options means that virtually 100% of the cut is exported.” 196 Main Road Spring Grove RD1 Wakefield, Nelson @borlasetransport Providing log distribution in and around the Nelson, Tasman, Marlborough & West Coast regions 03-541 8614 Ground-based Harvesting in the Tasman Region For all your harvesting and post-harvest/recovery needs Scott Reed • 0272159025 • scott.reed@rcnl.co.nz
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