News articles
WPMA - it's official...
The merger of WPA & PMA into the WPMA was celebrated at the official launch on Thursday evening 4 September in Wellington and was kindly hosted by Deloitte....
WPMA - latest...
WPMA legally came into existence on 1 July. Our new Board of Brian Stanley, Tom Boon, Owen Griffiths, Charles Black, Tim Rigter, Mark Taylor, Doug Ducker, Paul Jordan and Jon Ryder met for the inaugural Board meeting on 24 June...
Illegal logging – Important Note
The Australian Illegal Logging Prohibition Act 2012 has been in effect since November 2012. The Act makes it an offence to import ../../Site/Media/a timber product that has been illegally logged._nbsp.css; Now, the Illegal Logging Prohibition Amendment Regulation 2013 is law and its requirements come into effect on 30 November 2014...
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NZS 3603
The review of NZS 3603 Timber Structures is now underway. MBIE has contracted Standards New Zealand to project-manage this review and industry partners are now being sought as technical drafters, peer reviewers and to compose the Technical Review Committee...
Filling the skills gap
WPMA was at the launch of MPI’s assessment of skills needs for the primary sector by 2025. The report, “People Powered” anticipates that there will be around a 50% decrease in workers with no post-school qualifications in the forest and wood industry by that time...
NZ Sustainable Forestry Standard and PEFC
As promised in the last newsletter Standards New Zealand has now published a New Zealand Sustainable Forestry Management Standard. NZS / AS 4708 is now available for purchase from SNZ in electronic or hard copy...
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Health and Safety at Work Act
WPMA is closely involved in the work to develop regulations to support the new Health and Safety at Work Act. As part of our ongoing programme to monitor changes in the rules in Workplace Exposure Standards/Hazardous Substances we are now looking at much more far-reaching changes to the legislation which include regulating general workplace risk, worker participation and representation...
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Anti-dumping and Countervailing Duties Submission
In June MBIE consulted industry on its intention to remove anti-dumping duties on importe../../Site/Media/d construction materials and products._nbsp.css; MBIE is concerned that these duties are having a harmful effect on competition resulting in increasing prices paid by NZ consumers especially in times of natural disasters such as earthquakes...
Solid Wood Initiative – challenging you to save 5% of your energy costs
SWI is a research consortium servicing 13 wood processing companies in NZ including WPMA members has been funded by EECA to help achieve a saving of 5% of current energy use in wood processing companies...
Leadership opportunities for the wood sector
Wood sector companies are invited to become involved in the two leading rural leadership development programmes now managed under the Rural Leadership Consortium (a joint venture between Lincoln University and the Nuffield Trust)...
United...
Our road to the creation of an organisation representing the whole supply chain is nearing completion. The combined Boards of PMA and WPA, in February, approved the new constitution and agreed that from April 1 onwards the organisation should be referred to as the WPMA...
NZS 3603
NZS3603 revision has been two years in the wilderness whilst we waited for DBH to dissolve and re-emerge as MBIE and for NZ standards system to undergo major surgery...
Government Procurement of Building Materials
MBIE is looking at how it can procure building materials in large volumes effectively and provide government with price certainty...
WPMA is aware that new environmental profiling schemes are on the horizon. European and US markets are already demanding that products come with a declaration of their environmental impact...
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Timber Design Awards
The NZ Timber Design Awards were very successful this year and congratulations to all those winners who are taking wood-based construction to new heights...
ForestWood 2014
You can’t fail to have noticed that ForestWood 2014 created large media waves. The heated political debate on stage revealed NZ forest industry policies...
Clarky’s Comment
A message to processors and manufacturers from PF Olsen CEO, Peter Clark, recently published in WoodMatters...
Defying gravity
For those of you attending the WPA / PMA / FTMA Conference at the end of October I make no apologies for repeating the Chair’s question – where does our industry sit on the Government’s radar? You could extend that question to ask where our industry features in public perception as well...
The complexity of electricity power prices can be daunting for medium and smaller customers such as sawmills and other manufacturers in the pulp, paper and paper products sectors...
Certainty is Key - WPA Conference - 31 October
A while back I was talking to the chairman of NZ’s biggest meat processing company. He was marvelling at the wood sector’s ability to think, plan and invest in an industry where forestry investment cycles extend out to 30 years......
National Timber Quality Scheme
The Timber Quality Scheme is being set up so that:
- All producers work to the same compliance requirements;
- Audit processes are robust and transparent;
- We get “teeth” into treatment and grading audits to deal with non-compliance.......
Standards New Zealand (SNZ) is mid-way through a public consultation period on a new National Standard for Forest Management in New Zealand. WPA has contracted SNZ to run a process that looks for New Zealand to adopt the already existing Australian Forest Management Standard (AS4708)........
Forest Stewardship Council
WPA is coordinating an FSC National Risk Assessment for Controlled Wood. As supply chain concerns grow over global sources of controlled wood FSC has required all member states to conduct a risk assessment.......
WPA is ever vigilant for new standards coming over the horizon. The environmental profiling of buildings and building materials is now embodied in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and become embedded in ISO standards and national standards bodies such as the US Environment Protection Agency.......
In the last newsletter we highlighted our on-going log supply problem. As China comes to rely more and more on New Zealand for logs we were informed by economists at the Ministry for Primary Industries last week to expect wood export receipts to rise......
National Timber Quality Scheme
As we move into the final stages implementing the Timber Quality Scheme (TQS) we are now working with industry audit bodies to see how they themselves will be accredited to audit the TQS...
Illegal logging
MPI has posted a national wood legality statement on its website. This is a lengthy document designed as a stop-gap measure for companies under pressure to provide official assurances to markets...
New NZ Standards
WPA has been working to set up new forestry and chain of custody standards in New Zealand...
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NZ Wood
NZ Wood, the promotional arm of the Wood Council of New Zealand has confirmed that it is scaling back its activities...
Red Stag leaps forward
Congratulations to Red Stag on the significant investment that saw the Prime Minister opening their new reman plant at the Waipa Mill in February.
