Pruning Workstream

Pruning is reliant on unskilled labour, much of it from the Pacific Islands, and the costs of pruning have risen sharply due to the difficulties in attracting labour to do this physical and hard work. Pruning is a value-add activity that can move radiata pine into higher value markets, but at current costs and returns, coupled with the difficulty of securing labour, the majority of the larger forest owners have stopped pruning. Small-scale forest owners, in general, are continuing to prune, and even if fully mechanised solutions are developed, the scale and the dispersed nature of these forests may mean that fully mechanised solutions are not as cost effective in smaller blocks.