Impact KPI-2 Dispersed forests

IO1: Commercial forestry and ecosystem services

By 2019 tools developed by Scion and its partners will be used by New Zealand forest growers and harvesting companies to reduce harvesting costs, improve safety of tree extraction and improve supply chain logistics.  

Leading indicator
Progress
By 2016 prototypes of new harvesting tools and value chain approaches have been demonstrated that have the potential to save the forestry industry at least $50 million p.a. over 2010 costs.

The PGP-funded FFR harvesting programme was successfully completed and has achieved:

  • >70 hauler operations extracting trees with grapples (from 16 cable operations grapple extracting at programme start);
  • A more than 100% increase in the number of crews mechanically felling and processing;
  • A prototype fully teleoperated steepland feller buncher, which leads the way to reducing in-forest staff;
  • First trialling of a remote-controlled twin winch tailhold carriage (skyshifter) in a controlled environment;
  • Development of an automatic quick coupling mechanism that will increase machine utilisation and help reduce some harvesting costs;
  • Development of a remote-controlled felling wedge that will help to eliminate tree felling accidents.

MPI has approved a 12-month extension of the current PGP.

By 2017 Scion will have implemented a set of information tools that increase value recovery for the wood processing sector.A PGP bid with industry that includes traceability for the forest sector was started.
By 2018 Scion will have developed tools and models for the forest products value chain that will be in use to determine where to intervene in order to maximise benefits from the existing forest resource.  This work will have created better connectivity between growers and processors, and between small-scale forest growers.
Scion was commissioned to extend the system for determining the location and age class distribution of forests to include additional attribute information. The system is based on remotely sensed data and is able to help wood processors with wood supply planning by identifying stands, including small woodlots, with suitable characteristics.