NZ pine to go smarter

By PAM GRAHAM

A New Zealand branded range of furniture is being launched at one of the world's largest furniture shows in nine days' time.

The wraps remain firmly on the new range to achieve maximum impact at the Cologne International Furniture Fair when it opens its doors to an expected 200,000 visitors from 90 countries on January 19.

But when the publicity machine switches on it will be promoting the marriage of Danish design and New Zealand pine.

The aim is to lose the low-quality image of radiata pine furniture and move the products upmarket.

The designer is believed to be Zenia House, a Denmark-based maker of furniture from Baltic pine. It has worked with Fletcher Challenge Forests to create furniture made from strips of radiata pine glued together.

The pitch will be that the edge-glued product uses clearwood to lose pine's knotty appearance and give it a smart-looking finish.

The Cologne show attracts 1400 vendors exhibiting new designs that furniture magazines say set industry trends for each year.

The show takes up more than 280,000sq m of space. Retailers get exclusive access until the last two days, when the public are allowed in.

The reaction of retailers will be key to the success of the venture.

The New Zealand design is believed to have clean European lines with one stain being, appropriately, all black. The project has come out of contacts set up by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.

Its existence was first leaked by Economic Development Minister Jim Anderton.

The Government is expected to argue the merits of trying to take pine's image upmarket and that investment required to make furniture components is less than the hundreds of millions of dollars needed for pulp and paper mills. It is not clear how much of the furniture will be made in New Zealand.

The plan is for some of the components to be produced locally, with the rest being turned out overseas using New Zealand timber, but the details have yet to be decided.

Pine, being a softwood, has traditionally been at the bottom end of the furniture market and has yet to be accepted in the huge Chinese market, where hardwood furniture is the norm.