Southland forestry firm's innovative use for offcuts

Southfields operations manager Adam Love. Photo / Stephen Jaquiery

Zero waste could well be the mantra of Southfields Group.

The Makarewa-based company, owned by forestry consultant Craig Milne, logs farmers' woodlots around the Southland region and also operates a sawmill.

Where there is timber, there are also offcuts.

A log might be milled to a 4.5m length, but the customer then wanted 3m lengths, so the quandary was what to do with those redundant bits, operations manager Adam Love said.

The Southfields team came up with a solution, aside from the firewood and woodchips for dairy farms that it also produced from the byproduct.

It recently started manufacturing timber products and its bar leaners and stools were on display at the Southern Field Days at Waimumu last week.

The company had the skills and the timber, and Mr Love said that "really we just need the inspiration which is what people can bring".

"We like timber, we don't want to see it go to waste, we want to be able to use it," he said.