Global Wood --industry news and reports on timber and furniture and other wood products

NEW ZEALAND:New Forestry Technology

¡¾Feb.21, 2002¡¿

New Forestry Technology

AUSTRALIA: Acoustic tools to identify and segregate high-strength logs at harvesting will be introduced to Australia at a workshop to be run by New Zealand¡¯s Forest Industry Engineering Association in Melbourne on March 20. Harvesting and forest managers are becoming more aware of the need for assigning prices to logs according to their quality, says FIEA spokesman John Stulen. The experience of New Zealand¡¯s two largest foresters, Carter Holt Harvey and Fletcher Challenge Forests, show that acoustic tools could increase returns for Australian log sellers and wood manufacturers by millions of dollars. The workshops will also demonstrate recently released x-ray scanning systems that segregate "wet" and "very wet" lumber, along with prototype high-speed CT scanners providing 3D images of logs for internal defect recognition. More information is available at www.fiea.org.nz.