| 63 T T Hugh de Lacy Same family for three generations Corrie and Jesse have recently started on a new 3800-tonne forestry block near Tapanui for Forest Harvesting Managers. FORESTRY Harland Bros Logging It’s a company that’s ridden out 50-odd years of the peaks and gullies of the forestry industry, and Harland Brothers Logging of Invercargill will scrape through the current trough too, albeit after some drastic down-sizing. There are no longer any actual brothers in Harland Brothers Logging, just two cousins, Jesse and Corrie Harland, but the company has been in the same family for three generations, and there are no plans to update the name. Jesse and Corrie are descended from the three Harland brothers, Robert, David and Raymond, who started out in the industry with axes after World War II, and were swept up by the switch to the chainsaws and skidders that replaced them. In fact Harland Brothers Logging was the first in the country to buy a skidder, a KMC, and profited from the resultant sharp rise in productivity. Robert and David were keen to adopt the next big machinery breakthroughs in forestry, the harvester and the forwarder, but Raymond was a doubter and left the company, only to return later as an employee when the new technology was proven. Jesse’s and Corrie’s uncle Peter Harland succeeded the founding brothers and, after Jesse and Corrie succeeded Peter, a third cousin, Paige Harland, joined the company until parenthood recently beckoned, and in 2019 she won the Southern Wood Council Forestry Award for Best Forestry Apprentice. But it’s lately been a battle for Harland Brothers Logging as the Covid pandemic that infected the Chinese timber market continues to defy predictions of a recovery. Eighteen months ago the Harland cousins were operating six machines employing six staff. Now there’s just Jesse and Corrie – Corrie on the harvester and Jesse driving the forwarder and loading the trucks. They’ve already sold a couple of their machines, and they’ve got a 30-tonne Volvo excavator with a Woodsman Pro felling head on it, valued at around $360,000, sitting in their yard looking for a buyer on an over-supplied market. Corrie and Jesse have recently started on a new 3800-tonne forestry block near Tapanui for Forest Harvesting Managers, after completing a 4000t one for the same company earlier in the year. Most of their output is trucked by Fleetwood Transport to Port Chalmers for export, though some goes to supply local mills like Stuarts in Tapanui and Panpac in Milton. The continued survival of the Harland Brothers Logging business was underwritten by the decision in 2020 to invest in a Sumitomo SH300TLFS fitted with a Woodsman Pro 750 head, replacing a larger Sumitomo, and promoting a change in harvest method. “A lot of people keep the harvester on a skid and take the logs to it, but our one goes into the bush and cuts up there, so the slash is spread across the cut-over and not just piled up at the end of the skid,” Jesse says. The Harland cousins are well enough placed with forward work for the two of them, but the chances of taking their operation back up to the level of a couple of years ago don’t look bright. “We’d love to expand the business and get it back to the size it was a couple of years ago, but right now we’re just trying to optimise what we have enough for me and Corrie to carry on working,” Jesse says. Your Local Insurance Experts Level 3, Rothbury House, 36 Kelvin Street, Invercargill 9810 Phone: 03 211 0360 Fax: 03 214 0253 www.rothbury.co.nz Rothbury is proud to insure Harland Bros Logging “Supporting local businesses since 1950” 2tyretracks@gmail.com www.2tyretracks.co.nz Servicing all Southland, Otago & South Canterbury 03 215 4556 027 201 4149 Authorised service agent for WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT TO GET THE JOB DONE FAST! AUTHORISED SERVICE CENTRE P O N S S E
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