Our Precision Silviculture Programme, Planting and Establishment team, has been out and about supporting innovation in mechanised planting in New Zealand.
In September we visited a trial being carried out with the M-Planter by Aspect Forestry & Contracting in the Top of the South Region. We were most impressed with the innovations the Aspect Forestry team has implemented to overcome some of the challenges of planting in the steeper terrain, with many learnings for our Precision Silviculture Programme and taking mechanised planting in NZ a step forward.
We followed up this visit in September by hosting a field day together with Pan Pac Forest Products Ltd and Oji Fibre Solutions in the Central North Island to bring together forest industry members and engineering companies to see Plantma Forestry‘s PlantMax planting machine in action! The purpose of our event was to foster innovation around how we might implement some adaptions to improve the efficiency of this machine for the New Zealand forestry environment. It was a great opportunity for interaction between some key players who can drive the future of mechanised planting in New Zealand.
It’s becoming increasingly clear the future for mech planting in New Zealand is not a ‘one size fits all’ type solution! Our next steps include working with Scion to get a deeper understanding of the terrain suitable to different mechanised planting platforms in New Zealand.
