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HFF - Updates Well as you all know it has been a wet 6 months. We installed a rain gauge in one of our forests in early March and so far have recorded approximately 1300mm of rain. On the positive side in May 2012 the 3rd annual Eastland Wood Council Forestry Awards were held with very good success for HFF as BBL one of our Roadline contractors won the major award for the evening, the “Skilled Forestry Professional of the year Award” as well as the Roading Excellence Award. Other HFF winners included Kane Withers with the Harvesting Excellence Award (Harvest Pro) and William Jones the Modern Apprentice Award (BBL). We would also like to thank and congratulate all HFFs worthy nominations and those fortunate enough to win. Well Done! Another HFF achievement has been to win the annual East Coast Forest Industry Golf Tournament. In December each year the forestry companies and associated service providers of the East Coast Region get together for a Golf tournament, in December 2011 a HFF team took out the competition for the first time in 8 years. Congratulations HFF. We have also increased our sponsorship this past year to include the Gisborne Life Education trust, Wingspan (protecting and rehabilitating New Zealand’s Birds of Prey) and our largest single donation to date of $15,000 was made to St Johns to contribute towards their new facilities. Updates are continued on Page 2

Tony Shanahan of BBL center with Harvesting Manager Dan Fraser

Left and General Manager Paul Ainsworth to the right

August 2012 Edit ion 13

Hikurang i Fo rest Farms Ltd . Cnr Derby St and Gladstone Rd, G isborne, PO Box 242, Gi sborne, 4040 06-867 9799 newslet ter@hff .co.nz www.hff .net .nz

Hikurangi Forest Farms Ltd. Stakeholder Newsletter

Kane Withers of Harvest Pro

Welcome to the latest edition of Hikurangi Forest Farms stakeholder newsletter.

HFF Stakeholder Newsletter No.13 Page 2

HFF Updates continued

Staff Updates At the end of last year our Finance Manager left after 10 years with the company, Gerard returned to the central north Island to be closer to family. Earlier this year Tony Wilson of IT Support left after 9 years, like may Kiwi’s he decided to try his luck in Australia. We wish them both luck in their future endeavours. We welcomed 3 new staff to our team new Finance Manager Brendon Lennane, new IT support Mark Clinton and with the continued increase to our harvest we added a new Harvest Coordinator Hamish Gollan. New Finance Manager Brendon Lennane: Brendon Lennane joined us in February as the new Finance Manager. Born and bred in Gisborne, he has returned home after studying at Massey University and working in a variety of accounting roles both in NZ and in London. Brendon has over 20 years’ experience as a Chartered Accountant and is excited about his new role and being closer to family. He is also looking forward to catching up with old friends in hockey and tennis as he represented Poverty Bay in both before he left for University. New IT Support/GIS Technician Mark Clinton: Mark grew up in Newcastle, Australia and graduated from Newcastle University with a degree in Computer Science. He started working in Sydney for a software and training company for a few years, before moving to Christchurch where he worked in IT for a finance company. After a year of earthquakes decided to make the move to the north island and ended up in Gisborne. He knew nothing about forestry before starting here and is enjoying learning what it’s all about. Mark is a keen surfer who enjoys long walks on the beach and playing dungeons and dragons.

New Harvest Coordinator Hamish Gollan: Hamish comes to HFF with extensive experience in roading and harvesting management. Hecompleted his NZCF in Rotorua then went to work for Juken Nissho in Masterton, initially insilviculture and then moved into Harvesting/Roading management. He had a short OE to Australia and America. On return to NZ took up a position with Wrightson Forestry doing woodlot harvesting in the Rotorua region and then worked as Contracts Manager Roading for theTararua District Council. Hamish moved to Gisborne to work for Ernslaw One managing harvesting/roading operations in Ruatoria before starting with HFF. Hamish is married with 2 children and is enjoying living in the Gisborne region.

HFF Stakeholder Newsletter No.13 Page 3

Recently HFF have started taking educational tours of our estate, tour groups include School Groups, The Gisborne Herald and Transit of Venus celebrations. The purpose of these tours is to promote forestry as a career and to educate the community about the positive benefits of forestry in our region. The most recent tour was a group of students from the Lytton High School Trade Academy. Lytton High School Trade Academy Forest Visit On the 10th of August, 10 students and their teacher spent the day with HFF operations staff at Mangarara Forest where they learnt about Land Preparation, Establishment, Environmental requirements of forestry and Forest Fire protection. The day started at 7.30am with a presentation explaining the history of HFF and the process and reasons why land preparation is required and the importance it has on successful establishment and the environmental best practice for both operations. This included a visit to the Forest Information department to show them the mapping system HFF uses to produce operational maps and the skills required through education to do so. The group arrived at the Forest and was shown areas that had been desiccated and over-sown. The group was then given an area to plant and asked to plant to the planting prescription. Once the planted area was completed the students established a quality control plot to check if they met the prescribed standard. The day ended with a visit to the new Firestorelooking at HFFs rural fire equipment.

Photos from Top:

Tolaga Bay Area School Group

Lytton High School Trade Academy Students

A Lytton High School Student Planting

HFF – Forest Tours

HFF Stakeholder Newsletter No.13 Page 4

New Forestry Environmental Focus Group Formed in Gisborne

The Eastland Wood Council have recently formed an Environmental Focus Group to tackle the issues arising with harvesting operations moving into steeper land, frequent high intensity rain fall events and the downstream effects on other land users. The group comprises of forest managers, GDC Soil Conservators, Transit NZ, MAF and subsequently HFFs Harvest Planner Jarred Moroney was elected Chairmen. The group goals are: • Share experiences & information to reduce environmental impacts of Forestry operations. • To design and trial new ideas that may reduce environmental impacts. • Modify/add to existing industry Best Practice Guidelines for reducing environmental impacts

The first meeting was held on the 25th of May 2012 and meet six weekly since. The initial focus has been slash management, i.e. slash at landing processing sites, on slopes and/or waterways. A second focus is on measurement of catchment sizes to determine culvert design and placement. A huge amount of work has been done specifically by HFF with the design and construction of slash catchers. The primary management strategy is to minimise slash getting into streams with slash catchers providing a secondary back-stop by catching slash which has entered a waterway and prevent it from migrating further downstream into neighbouring land. Slash catchers are currently constructed from railway irons placed like a picket fence across a stream and strengthened with wire rope (see edition 11). They are expensive to construct and must be cleaned out after each big rain event and/or when full of slash/debris so become a significant on-going cost and job to maintain. The Focus Group is currently working with GDC on the best tree species and planting spacing to create permanent slash catchers using trees. These will be located separately and not part of the normal P.radiata harvest regime. The disadvantage with natural tree slash catchers is they need a number of year’s growth before becoming effective. The Group will also make available best practice guidelines to interested parties involved with harvesting activities and hope to increase public awareness of how issues are being dealt with and the progress of the focus group.

Current Methods of Slash Management Include: Left: Slash Catcher installed on a neighbouring property

Middle: Burning of Unstable slash piles to reduce slash left on site Right: Increased drainage around slash piles to divert water away from slash and soil, decreasing the chance of failure

HFF Stakeholder Newsletter No.13 Page 5

Harvesting

New Machinery to reduce Soil Disturbance

In May 2012 Tony Shanahan of BBL Logging Ltd added a 50 ton Komatsu excavator fitted with a two drum winch attachment to his fleet of construction equipment. The aim of this new initiative is to reduce tracking and soil disturbances associated with logging road line corridors on steep slopes. The winch operates a main and haulback line so can be operated like a mini cable hauler and/or use the mainline with a tong (lightweight grapple) attachment for extracting logs off the steep slopes. Talking with Tony Shanahan he explains that since having this machine they have almost totally eliminated any need of tracking outside of the newly formed road/haul track.

Photo Top Right: 50ton shovel and winch machine BBL is currently using Photo Middle: Example photo showing the elimination of mid-slope and other stab tracks through the face of a hill

Upgrade to HFF Hauler HFF recently contracted Universal Engineering Gisborne to conduct a major refurbishment of our Madill 071 cable hauler. This entailed removal of the original inoperable WW2 tank undercarriage and replacing with a late model 50 ton excavator undercarriage. The conversion was completed on time and on budget. Black Stump Logging Ltd lease the hauler from HFF and the refurbishment means the hauler is now very maneuverable and has decreased walk and set up times when shifting. The conversion has also increased the stability of the hauler when walking or pulling logs.

Above: Madil 071 after track conversion

Left: Madill 071 before track conversion, complete with WW2 tank tracks.

HFF Stakeholder Newsletter No.13 Page 6

Fire HFF recently had a new light fire pump trailer made in Wellington by Fraser Engineering Ltd. The trailer will contain 3 pumps and associated equipment such as hose packs, foam, portable dams and many other items mainly used for fire mop up operations, one of the biggest jobs and just as important as suppression of the initial fire. The new trailer will complement the other large range of rural fire equipment housed and owned by HFF in their new Dunstan Rd Fire Depot. Planting

HFF - Operations

HFF’s new custom made fire trailer

The 2012 planting has drawn to a close with 1425 hectares of replanting harvested areas. 1,456,511 cuttings and seedlings were applied to the vacant land by a team of 36 men and women with a further 4-5 people assisting with quality control audits, GPS, and tree distribution. This operation will be closely followed by spot spraying releasing to eliminate competitive grass and weed species. Along with this operation there are numerous other people involved such as nursery staff, trucking and helicopter assistance.

Hikurangi Forest Farms Ltd. A member of TreeOne (NZ) Ltd. Cnr Derby St and Gladstone Rd, Gisborne 4010 PO Box 242, Gisborne 4040 New Zealand

Phone: 06 - 867 9799 Fax: 06 – 867 9775

E-mail: newsletter@hff.co.nz

Website: www.hff.net.nz

Hikurangi Forest Farms Ltd aims to produce a sustainable supply of top quality logs from its plantation forest estate to facilitate the manufacture of high quality forest products. HFF is an equal opportunity employer that operates an active health and safety management system including a Health and Safety Management Plan and Emergency Plan. It has an active and ongoing commitment to a drug and alcohol policy to keep its workplaces productive and drug and alcohol free. Additionally, HFF also recognises the value and importance of environmental responsibilities. To this end HFF is

committed to maintaining Forest Stewardship Council Certification™ for all HFF owned or managed lands. When Hikurangi Forest Farms Ltd prints this newsletter, it uses FSC™ certified paper.