Peter Clark
New Zealand’s Timaru’s port looks set to benefit from an Australasian forestry management business branching out to a new operation in South Canterbury. Source: Stuff NZ
PF Olsen has opened its newest regional office on Sefton St East in Timaru. The firm’s portfolio includes harvesting and marketing wood from privately owned forests and woodlands, alongside tree planting and thinning, pruning management and forest insurance.
At the opening, chief executive Peter Clark said the firm, one of the largest in its sector in Australasia, producing timber from 330,000 hectares across New Zealand and Australia, was setting the new regional office as a “local extension” of its international operations.
“We have well established offices in Christchurch and Dunedin, but there is a lot of country and a lot of forestry blocks in between … we need feet on the ground.
“We need to be close to forests and their owners.” Mr Clark said the “wonderful port” in Timaru would be a key part of its regional set up.
“Log exports are important as they provide a market for parts of the tree that most New Zealand sawmillers cannot utilise well, and it underwrites the economic returns that forest owners need to keep planting forests.”
PF Olsen South Canterbury manager Henry Morris told the gathered audience that the firm was headquartered in Rotorua, from where it ran a series of “regional headquarters, which in turn oversee district branches”.
“This new Timaru office is one of these satellite offices working under the Canterbury branch in the Northern South Island region.”
Morris reiterated the firm’s commitment to using PrimePort as a gateway for exporting timber.
“We sell our logs into the best markets … we have teamed up with Pacific Forest Products to export our logs.
“This has brought a third exporter to PrimePort, which has in turn increased the revenue generated from logging activity to forest owners across the board.”
PrimePort chief executive Phil Melhopt said logging exports were the port’s main bulk export item, second to dairy products.
Last year 400,000 tonnes of logging exports left the port and the addition of PF Olsen using the port to export would see PrimePort have four logging exporters, he said.
Products were sourced from within South Canterbury and went as far south as the Herbert Forest, near Oamaru, and were sourced from the Mid-Canterbury region as well, Melhopt said.
“Logging is a very important part of our product mix… and we welcome additional logging exporters on board.”
