Controversial Rotorua Lumbercube site sold and being dismantled

Cranes are currently dismantling equipment at Rotorua's former Lumbercube site. Photo / Stephen Parker

A Rotorua timber mill which has long caused angst for neighbours has sawn its last log at the site.

Eastside residents can breathe a final sigh of relief that Lumbercube won't be operating again with activity showing the forestry mill is being dismantled.

The site, on Vaughan Rd, has been sold to the same owners as long-standing Rotorua trucking business, Rotorua Forest Haulage.

In the past few days, workers have been using cranes at the site to dismantle the machinery.

Lumbercube operated on the old Tachikawa mill site between September 2015 and April 2016 and immediately drew the ire of Eastside residents who said the noise was causing loss of sleep, stress and anxiety.

The issue divided the town whose residents were torn between the obvious distress to people living in the area - proven with 3400 noise complaints made to the Rotorua Lakes Council - and the 80 people who lost their jobs as a result of the mill closure.

Certificate of title documents show the site was bought by TBP Investments Ltd in August last year. One of the company's directors declined to comment to the Rotorua Daily Post about its plans for the site, which is directly opposite the Rotorua Forest Haulage base.

Maui Capital, the former owner of Pederson Group which ran Lumbercube, managing director Paul Chrystall said the company decided to sell Lumbercube last year because it had "moved on" and wasn't going to try and reopen a mill at the site.

"[The noise issues]made it an unrealistic place to continue with a mill."

Rotorua deputy mayor Dave Donaldson, who lives near the mill site, said as a resident he and his family were pleased to see the mill being dismantled.

"There was a huge sense of relief in the community the Lumbercube operation shut down when it did and to see the dismantling of the equipment in there will further reinforce that sense of relief that that particular operation will not start up again. That's certainly the way my family and myself feel about it."

However, Donaldson said he was the "meat in the sandwich" as at the time the council was criticised for allowing the mill to continue operating, despite it having appropriate industrial resource consent to do so.

"At the time [it was hard] being a councillor and living on the Eastside and living among neighbours who were seriously adversely affected by the noise of the Lumbercube operation when it ran all hours of night.

"But it is positive another Rotorua business has bought the site with a long association with Rotorua."