Red Stag Timber at Waipa wins award for biomass powered sawmill

Aerial view of Red Stag Timber in Rotorua. Photo / File

Red Stag Timber has won an award for its biomass powered sawmill.

The Southern Hemisphere's largest sawmill, based at Waipa south of Rotorua, won the Large Energy User Initiative of the Year award at the Deloitte Energy Excellence Awards in Auckland on Wednesday.

The awards provide an annual opportunity to recognise excellence and achievement across the energy sector.

The judges said biomass powered sawmilling focused on Red Stag's new biomass boiler and turbine.

"Making the site self-sufficient in all process thermal and electrical energy requirements, generated entirely from the site's process waste, it exhibits Red Stag's commitment to sustainability in the New Zealand construction industry."

Red Stag Timber processes one million tons of logs per year and recently added the biomass boiler and steam turbine generator.

This allowed the site to process all of its waste residues, supply all its own thermal energy, and all of its own electricity and exports power to the national grid while remaining carbon neutral from local sustainable plantation forestry.