New Zealand’s current focus on safely logging steep areas places them in the ideal position to share knowledge and innovation regarding this subject.
ForestTECh 2013 was sold out three weeks before the event ran. More than 430 forestry professionals from plantation countries in the Southern Hemisphere and North America attended the conference in Rotorua, New Zealand. New Zealand’s steep logging harvest area (slope over 20 degrees) is currently 44 % of the harvest and is expected to increase to 53 % by 2016 and over 60 % by 2025. Over the next 12 years in New Zealand, with current logging system productivity, a new cable harvesting crew is required every four weeks.
New Zealand forestry companies, forestry logging equipment suppliers, and logging contractors are leading the development of some of the new and innovative equipment being used on steep slopes. Some of these developments include grapple-equipped hauler carriages, tethered winch-assist machines, new wheeled harvesters, remote controlled mechanical tree felling and robotics, automation, and image processing integrated into new machinery. HarvestTECH 2015 will again be held in Rotorua, on 24 and 25 June 2015. Source: www.harvesttech.events