The Australian Forest Contractors Association hosted a Skills 360 Driving Futures Field Trip near Maryborough in Queensland this week taking in a number of timber sites in the area. Source: Timberbiz
AFCA general manager Carlie Porteous said the day was an opportunity for the industry as a whole to showcase the varying roles available and for the participants to see first-hand what excites and interests them.
“The cohort will complete the program with Units of Competency relevant to the industry, a Heavy Rigid licence and a ticket to operate heavy machinery.
“It’s a great program with great prospects and AFCA can’t wait to roll it out in other States,” she said.
The field trip began with a tour of the HQPlantations nursery at Toolara.
HQP is the largest plantation forest grower in Queensland, managing 320000 hectares of plantation forest throughout the state.
The field trip then toured the Sunchip Group’s clearfell harvesting operations.
Australian owned and operated, Sunchip Group was established in 1997 and has grown to become one of the largest standalone contractors in Australia.
The Sunchip Group operation has grown to employ more than 150 people throughout Queensland and New South Wales.
Sunchip specialises in flat country unique harvesting and steep slope harvesting, boasting both an impressive fleet of trucks and heavy equipment.
Next came GMT Logging’s Missings Logging Area, a residue chip to mulch operation.
In this block GMT previously moved the residue to the roadside with an excavator to avoid bogging the Bruks chipper in the soft ground conditions common to this area of the plantation.
Ordinarily GMT would move along the residue line chipping it in situ (20m from the road edge), catching the chip in the bin and loading into trucks for haulage.
Australian Forest Contractors Association hosted a Skills 360 Driving Futures Field Trip near Maryborough in Queensland
At the moment GMT does not have a buyer for the woodchip, so it is being spread on site as mulch, saving the burning of the residue.
The operator’s name is Steven Birrell, who hails from Mt Gambier SA & worked previously in one of LV Dohnt’s chipping operations. He has been driving this machine since new (nearly two years). There are currently only two of these machines in Australia, and both are operated by GMT.
The Bruks is a 500HP drum chipper capable of producing 30t of chip per hour. The bin holds 21 m3 of chip & can tip it directly into a 4.2m high trailer.
GMT Logging is a family-owned and operated business based in Imbil, Queensland which began harvesting plantation timber in the Mary Valley in 1976 and have since branched out into other parts of the State.
The field trip also visited GMT’s Cowra Logging Area, a clear fall operation of a failed area of “Yellow Pine”.
GMT’s crew usually operates in commercial second thinnings but is engaged in this salvage harvest to lower the crew’s production from 180 tonne per day, to around 100t/day in this salvage. This is due to a slow down log volume being ordered.
Both machines are made by Ponsse in Finland and are perfectly suited to this small tree size and are operated by John Notley (Harvester – has been with GMT for eight years, but in the industry for many more) and Jai Everlyn (Forwarder – has been with GMT for only two months but worked for Tabeel in Mt Gambier SA before moving to Maryborough).
The field trip finished with a tour of Hyne’s Tuan Mill which utilises world-class manufacturing technology processing 30-year-old Queensland plantation pine which is distributed by up to 180 trucks per day.
The mill employs approximately 200 people directly and provides significant indirect employment through contractor supply, site services and by-product processing.
The daily volume of structural framing produced by Tuan Mill would stretch from Hervey Bay to the Gold Coast.
Framing products (such as T2 Blue, T2 Red and T3 Green Plus) and by-products (such as bark, shavings and sawdust) are freighted out to sales and distribution outlets or directly to customers.
Tuan Mill has a number of by-product customers such as Laminex and Altus Renewables, ensuring that there is no waste generated.
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