Protecting the future of local wood

By JANET TYSON

Furniture makers, already earning nearly $100 million dollars in exports each year, have welcomed recommendations that should ensure continuing access to indigenous timbers.

A streamlined approvals process, some relaxation of export rules and Government funding for research are included in the report of the primary production select committee entitled A Sustainable Future for our Indigenous Forests.

Incentives for forest owners to stop land clearance for other purposes are also recommended, such as direct grants for better fencing on farmland and support for landcare groups.

"Anything which improves the long-term certainty of supply of indigenous timbers is welcome," says Marcia Dunnett, executive director of the Furniture Manufacturers Association, one of the hundred groups and individuals who made submissions to the select committee.

"People just love the look and qualities of our timber. It is a point of difference, and it gives us a real competitive advantage. There is real value in making export furniture out of indigenous timbers.

"But furniture makers can't go into the international marketplace to sell a product if they have no ongoing certainty of supply."

Dunnett says a number of points made in the Furniture Manufacturers' submission have been picked up in the select committee report.

"It's very heartening to see the report recommends there should be support through Industry NZ for developing international markets."

More secure research funding could be crucial for an industry that is facing increased imports both of timber and of furniture, at a time supplies of rimu, for so long the staple of furniture manufacturers, have been dramatically cut back.

This puts increased pressure on manufacturers to export. New Zealand has 1800 furniture manufacturing businesses, most of them based in small regional centres.

After the signing of the West Coast Accord, only 17 per cent, or 1.3 million hectares, of indigenous forest remains in private ownership. Some of this is covenanted for reserve, and much of it is in small holdings, and difficult to access.

"Research funding could look into improved wood utilisation," says Dunnett. "This could include improved processing techniques for timbers like red beech, which are difficult to dry for export, and ways to use veneers and otherwise extend what will always be a very small resource.

"Anything is a step forward. There is no way we will get a giant leap into using native timbers. The most important thing is to make sure that whatever is around is secure.

"We also need to find out whether other trees, like rimu, can be grown and harvested relatively rapidly."

The report recommends lifting restrictions that apply to other species, in particular beech, so that they can be used and exported in the same way as rimu.

It says all timber to be exported should be grown under sustainable management.

There is still big potential to increase harvesting, and with it employment and the average price per cubic metre of the wood, says the report. Currently, only 40,000 cubic metres of native timber is being harvested, only 10,000 of it under a sustainable management permit or plan.

By 2010, there is potential to harvest 166,000 cubic metres under sustainable management, and to double the numbers employed in furniture manufacture to around 3000, the report says.



The select committee report comes just ahead of completion of stage 1 of the wood processing strategy group, which will make recommendations for the management of plantation forests coming on-stream, initially in Northland and on the East Coast.

Compared to this "wall of wood" indigenous timbers are a tiny niche.

But the furniture manufacturers are determined that it should be a very high-value niche.

The association is working with Industry NZ to lift the level of original design for export furniture, and with it the "overall excellence" of the product.

"If you're working in pine, the quality of design is your only competitive advantage," Dunnett says. Working in native timbers doubles the potential added value.

"When we lost access to the rimu, we wrote to a number of owners of indigenous forests, and said that furniture makers would like access to their native timbers and asked if they could make it available," she says.

"Manufacturers and millers are now developing direct relationships with forest owners who replied."