Minister Plans Renewed Health and Safety Focus

A review of New Zealand’s Workplace Health and Safety Strategy has identified key areas where work is needed to reduce workplace deaths and accidents, says Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson. “I have been concerned at the toll in our workplaces and last year’s fatalities report along with this review serve to highlight that we need to work harder with high risk industries, notably construction, agriculture and forestry,” Ms Wilkinson says.

The 10 year strategy was launched in 2005 and Cabinet decided then that there should be a review after three years’ operation to determine effectiveness and any change required to ensure the strategy continues to be relevant and effective. “The review is clear in that we are doing a lot of things well and progress is being made, but more needs to be done at ground level”, says Ms Wilkinson. “Part of the focus will be to ensure greater communication and co-ordination with industry bodies and small businesses, so that workplaces are aware of the causes of harm and do not repeat the same mistakes.”

Ms Wilkinson adds, “The construction, agriculture and forestry industries already have successful practical initiatives in place and I will be overseeing the development of a new set of actions that aims to assist them to take this work further”.

The strategy review is available on the Department of Labour’s website http://www.whss.govt.nz/review/review-report.shtml.

Two More Winners in Safe-Start-Up ACC-FICA Prize Draw

Congratulations to 2 our consolation prize winners - Neville Muir of Balclutha and Jason Nathan of Hamilton - who have each now received their prize, a hard cover colour photo book entitled "CHAINSAWS - A history"... to put on their coffee table. With over 200 full-colour pages the book details development in chainsaws over many years.

On behalf of ACC and FICA who sponsored the prize draw THANKS for entering. The draw helped all who entered to think about safety issues briefly and we want to remind folks about working safely on a regular basis. We will be running more prize competitions for those of you who wish to respond to our upcoming TEXT COMPETITIONS! Stand by to be part of a regular safety alert update and enter the competitions in the future. We will use an opt-in protocol - so you have to respond by text to be in future.

NZ Commodity Prices Lift a Little in January

The ANZ Commodity Price Index recorded a small increase in the first month of the New Year. The index lifted 0.4% in January, which represents the eleventh consecutive monthly rise in the index. The level of the index is over a third higher when compared to the same month a year earlier.

In world price terms, seven commodities recorded a strengthening in prices, while two recorded price declines. Log prices recorded the second largest monthly increase, rising 9.4%.

The value of the New Zealand dollar strengthened relative to all our major partners in January. This strengthening resulted in a drop in the commodity price index (-1.2%), when valued in NZ dollars. On an annual basis the NZ dollar commodity price index has only risen 5.0%.

Commodity Exports - HS Code 44.0 - Logs, Wood and Wood Articles
Month ended December		3 months ended December		12 months ended December
2008 $(million)	2009 P $(million)	2008 $(million)	2009 P $(million)	2008 $(million)	2009 P $(million)
172	193	643	594	2,184	2,317
UP 11.7%		DOWN 7.5%		UP 6.1%

(Source: Statistics NZ) (P - Provisional)

Back to Core Business for WA Forest Products Commission

In Western Australia the Forest Products Commission (FPC) will take on a redefined role and return to focusing on its core business of supplying wood to the forestry industry. As part of this redefinition, a taskforce has been established to look at the possibility of a sale of the fee-for-service and share-farming division of the FPC to the private sector. The taskforce is expected to report back within two months.

Forestry Minister Terry Redman said the State Government was keen to look at ways to exit the current role it played in the areas of planting trees for carbon off-sets and investing in share-farming by growing trees on farms for the purposes of harvesting. Mr Redman said that in recent years the private sector has invested more in these areas. For this reason, the Government is exploring ways to transfer this work to the private sector and simply focus on the role of supplying native hardwood, pine and sandalwood to our forest industries.

He added that the sectors have now matured to a point where private companies are creating plantations on private land. It is inappropriate to have Government competing against private sector in this area. With respect to share-farming, much more can be achieved by changing the Government’s role from direct investor on a small scale to a support agency that can provide advice, research and practical assistance to private sector projects of a larger scale.

With up to 90 FPC staff potentially affected by any changes in these areas the FPC has committed to consultation among various groups. FPC acknowledged that their people have a huge wealth of resources and knowledge that could be very attractive to private investors. A sale option will be thoroughly investigated as an alternative to redeployments or voluntary redundancies. Obligations to investors and landowners will be met regardless of any sale or restructure to FPC.

Twice the Benefit from Forest Deal

A pioneering deal involving a farm-to-forestry conversion and the subsequent sale of carbon credits from the forests is being heralded as a major win for the Waikato economy and the environment. Environment Waikato Chairman Peter Buckley said the agreement clearly demonstrated the potential economic benefits available to farmers, foresters and those needing carbon credits under emissions trading legislation while also protecting Lake Taupo’s water quality.

Under the deal, the Lake Taupo Protection Trust – funded by the Government, EW and Taupo District Council – has reached an agreement whereby it will compensate two Ngati Tuwharetoa entities for changing their farming operations. This change will achieve a 22,000 kilograms a year reduction in the amount of nitrogen entering the lake. Nitrogen leaching to the lake decreases water clarity and increases algal growth.

As part of the change, one of the Tuwharetoa entities, Puketapu 3A Incorporation, will convert 500 hectares of its farmland to forestry and sell the carbon credits it gains to electricity generator Mighty River Power under the Emissions Trading Scheme. The involvement of both nitrogen reductions and carbon trading is the first of its kind in New Zealand.

“This is the sort of innovation envisaged when Environment Waikato established its Variation 5 land use policy change to protect Lake Taupo,” said Mr Buckley. “For its part, EW will continue to support these types of arrangements and will be watching developments to see what implications they have for the regional economy and the environment.”

Environment Minister Nick Smith commended the proposal. “This innovative agreement perfectly illustrates the benefits of the Government’s Emissions Trading Scheme and its support for the Lake Taupo Protection Trust,” Dr Smith said. “It also demonstrates the importance of the relationship between the Crown and Maori on afforestation.”

Dr Smith believes the ETS provides the financial incentives for landowners to improve the environment by planting trees and reducing nitrate pollution. “The parties in this afforestation project have made it plain it would not be occurring if the Government had not settled the ETS last year,” he said. “A key objective of the ETS is to boost forest planting and this deal – so soon after the legislation was passed – is a clear sign that is happening.”

Potential Cost of a Major Forest Biosecurity Breach

Mountain pine beetle has killed more than one billion trees in British Columbia and once thriving forestry cities are facing a new prospect as ghost towns; Korea has banned log imports from Chile because of the perceived threat of a newly discovered Phytopthora that causes disease in radiata pine.

Scion researchers have calculated that the potential impact of major Asian log trade bans, triggered by a biosecurity threat, would lead to the loss of NZ$11 billion in the present value of NZ growers' revenues. Clearly, the potential financial risk of biosecurity breaches to the NZ forest industry is very significant.

While a major biosecurity breach may seem as inevitable as the outcomes of playing with a loaded gun, there are many ways to reduce the risk and to mitigate the impacts. Unlike Australia, New Zealand does not have a forest industry biosecurity plan and has been criticised for not being well enough prepared for the eventuality of a major biosecurity breach, either as it would impact our forests or impact our trade.

The NZ Forest Owners Association and MAF are planning to run a Forest Biosecurity Workshop on 23-24 February 2010 to address this issue, developing a more formal partnership between MAF and industry, and initiate the development of a New Zealand forest industry biosecurity plan. For more information check out www.nzfoa.org.nz or contact billdyck@xtra.co.nz or paul.stevens@maf.govt.nz

City Forests Trebles Profits with Sale of Credits

Forests, a subsidiary of the Dunedin City Council, has sold Kyoto carbon credits for three times the amount of its 2009 profit. A confidentiality clause in the sale agreement means the seller can’t say who has bought the 150,000 NZUs, but Carbon News understands that the deal is worth around $3 million and the buyer was a New Zealand emitter.

City Forests owns and runs the city’s 104-year-old forestry operation which consists of 16,000ha of commercial forests and last year made a profit of around $1m. Chief Executive Grant Dodson says that selling carbon is a dramatic boost to the company’s profitability, as forestry companies struggle with low log prices, high shipping costs and an adverse exchange rate. “It significantly improves the economics per hectare of forestry,” he told Carbon News.

Under the New Zealand emissions trading scheme, each year the owners of forests planted since 1989 can apply for and receive credits for each tonne of carbon stored by the forest. City Forests has 4000ha of post-1989 forest. Those post-1989 forests are estimated to have stored 80,000 tonnes of carbon in 2008 and the same amount again last year.

Dodson says that the company didn’t apply for its 2008 credits when they became due last year because it was still working through the process of analysing the risk. “We have a liability when we harvest those forests, when we will have to surrender credits for the carbon lost at harvest. We had to carefully work out what our liability is likely to be, and leave a margin for events like wind damage, before we knew how many credits we could afford to sell.”

Late last year, the company put all 160,000 credits from 2008 and 2009 up for sale through brokers OMFinancial, and just before Christmas got news of a buyer. The transaction went through at the end of last month.

NZUs are currently trading at around $20.

(Source: Carbon News)

Canadian’s Support for Biomass Highlights Policy Vacuum

The Canadian Federal Government last week announced funding of $292.5 million (AUD$315mil) to help its forestry sector develop renewable energy from biomass. This announcement coincided with the release of a Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) study concluding that the industry needs to make dramatic changes in order to remain viable. A3P continues to express concern that current renewable energy policy settings in Australia don’t do enough to encourage the use of renewable wood biomass by the wood products and paper industry. They encourage the government to introduce appropriate policy signals for the generation of heat as well as electricity. Without these, Australia risks losing both renewable energy development and regional employment opportunities.

(Source A3P)

Study into Forestry Tasmania Urges a Level Playing Field

A study released this week outlines how Tasmania tilts the legal and regulatory playing field towards the forestry industry over community, tourism and environmental interests. The report, authored by CSDev Associates, urges politicians to level the playing field and find a solution to the forest conflict in Tasmania.

“At the moment, a number of factors tilt the playing field away from conservation. Forestry Tasmania is tangled up in conflicts of priorities and wood supply obligations, whilst also wielding exceptional power and being disproportionately involved in government decision-making,” said Dr Russell, the report’s main author “The regulatory system is filled with exemptions, and politicians often appear captured by industry.”

To level the playing field, the report recommends the re-structuring of Forestry Tasmania to remove its conflicts of priorities and curtail its sweeping powers, as well as the removal of its minimum wood supply obligations.

The report does not paint an entirely bleak picture, also commending the forest industry for better community relations and responsiveness on issues like 1080 poison.

Environment Tasmania Director Dr Phill Pullinger believes the reports recommendations provide practical solutions for a timber industry increasingly searching for certainty and a social license. “This offers some important pathways forward to re-build Tasmanians’ trust in how our forests are managed and to get our timber industry out of endless conflict”, he said.

Forestry Tasmania Managing Director Bob Gordon said he was disappointed Environment Tasmania had chosen to make media comment about its forestry report ahead of its public release. "The report also ignores the fact that one million hectares of former state forest, which was once managed for multiple uses, has now been put into reserves. By definition, Tasmania's high conservation value forests are already protected in reserves”, he said.

"The report's recommendation to separate Forestry Tasmania's conservation obligations from its wood supply functions does not take into account the more than $5 million annually in unfunded community service obligations for which FT is responsible."

Mr Gordon stated that contrary to the implications of the report, Forestry Tasmania funds essential services such as conservation research, management of forest reserves, fire fighting and roads from the sale of wood products. “We receive no external financial support for these functions,” he said.

"It should be remembered that without native forest harvesting, we would not be able to supply high quality sawlogs or our iconic special species timbers such as myrtle and sassafras,” reminds Mr Gordon. “Some 4,500 direct jobs in Tasmania would also be lost.”

To view Forestry Tasmania’s full response to the report click here.

The report can be found on Environment Tasmania’s website (www.et.org.au). Environment Tasmania is seeking feedback & public comment on the report.

Buy and Sell

...and finally...The biker and the cop...

A motorcyclist was pulled over by a policeman whilst racing along the highway in the rolling countryside.

Officer: ‘Hop off the motorbike buddy, and show me your driving licence.’

Rider: ‘I don’t have a license – lost it after my fifth DIC charge.’

Officer: ‘Proof of insurance, then?’

Rider: ‘Sorry office, no insurance either.’

Officer: ‘Well, we’ll deal with that soon, where’s the registration papers?’

Rider: ‘ Ohh, I stole this bike, so I don’t have any.’

Officer: this is getting serious, open the backpack and lets see your insurance

Rider: ‘ Ohh, I don’t have insurance and I have an unregistered gun in my bag too.’

Officer (moving back to his patrol car): ‘Officer to base send more officers – I’m going to need backup to arrest an unlicensed driver on a stolen motorbike with no rego and no insurance.’

Second officer (arrives and addresses biker): ‘Okay let me get this straight – you’ve got no licence, no insurance, no registration, you stole this motorbike and you’ve got an unlicensed gun in your bag? Is this correct?’

Rider: ‘Is THAT what he told you (getting out documents and
opening his bag) – look officer, here is my licence, insurance, ownership and registration papers – and look, no gun anywhere in my bag. Did the other officer tell you all that?’ ‘I bet he said I was speeding too!

And on that note, enjoy the rest of your week. Cheers.

John Stulen
Innovatek Ltd Rotorua Office
PO Box 6160
Rotorua 3043
New Zealand

Ph:+64 7 921 1382
Fax:+64 7 348 1420
Web page: www.innovatek.co.nz

This week's extended issue can be viewed at www.woodweek.com