News at Nelson Pine Industries NPIL

Awards Win

Here’s a comparison that might surprise you, and an indicator of just how much NPI saves by fuelling most of the operation on waste wood: if all our energy needs on our site were provided by electricity, the additional power we’d need each year would be equivalent to the amount used annually by the whole Nelson-Tasman region.

Nelson Pine Industries has been a sponsor for the annual Tasman Environment awards for nine years. This year the awards were a combined Nelson Tasman affair and one of the new categories was renewable energy. Phil Wilson, Environmental Manager, decided it was time for NPIL to enter for an award, as we are definitely the largest user of renewable energy in the Nelson region.

“I had most of the information already lined up from resource consent applications, submissions on the government’s Emissions Trading Scheme and from a benchmarking exercise we’ve been through with Canterbury University,” Phil explains, “ and the judges said they were impressed with the thorough nature of our entry.”

We eliminated coal from our fuel mix back in 2005, making up the shortfall with forest waste delivered to our site by Wholesale Landscapes, which now accounts for 15% of the bio-fuel used on site. The judges gave us first place and commented on the effort NPI had made to reduce green house gases; showing at the same time that renewable energy can improve productivity and profits.

Richard Popenhagen, the city council eco-building design advisor and one of the judges, on a site tour with Philip Wilson.

Z-sifter enhances MDF quality

Over the summer Nelson Pine Industries Ltd installed a Metso Z-sifter. The Z-sifter is a quality enhancement in the MDF process that will separate any foreign objects from the fibre - such as sand, grit, balls of fibre or lumps of resin. Installation involved removing the fibre bin from its foundation to create the five-metre space needed for the Z-sifter. The Z-Sifter is a Metso product, designed in Sweden, constructed in Thailand and shipped to Nelson. Metso have now constructed 47 Z-sifters with many of them going into MDF plants in Malaysia and Thailand where latex is a problem in MDF produced from rubber trees.

Gaining Qualification

Nelson Pine Industries Veneer Line staff are reaping the rewards of the FITEC training programme.
“Since we started back in 2001, stepping up the qualifications has always been our goal,” says Manager Mark Lee. “We have set a minimum standard of Level 2 for all staff and we’re also supporting those who want to go to the higher levels.”

FITEC qualifications are nationally recognised and have just been modified to be more specific to each work area. The theory now matches up more closely with the jobs being done on the Veneer Line, and there are other areas such as Health and Safety, maths and workplace behaviour that also make FITEC study worthwhile.

“People are getting a lot out of it - you get a more in depth knowledge about the process and what we are doing here,” says Mark Lee. “It has been a team effort led by myself and Paul op den Buysch, but there has been a lot of cooperation and participation from staff, with the guys encouraging each other along.”
He notes none of this would happen without company support. Training plans are being developed for each staff member, with goals set for the coming year.

Hitting the High Notes

The Nelson Civic Choir were ‘singing higher’ at the 2006 performance of Handel’s Messiah in Nelson Cathedral - thanks to a new stage built from donated Nelson Pine MDF and LVL. Conductor Pete Rainey says the Cathedral is the best venue in Nelson for this production: “The acoustics and atmosphere are ideal for a choral performance.”

But lines of sight have always been a problem at cathedral concerts - not any more with the huge stage, catering for 90 singers, that spans the choir stalls and elevates the singers to the level of the pipe organ. Pete Rainey says the significant structure will totally change an audience’s experience of a choir.
Our project manager Hans Dukker worked closely with Pete and we lent some space in the LVL warehouse for the stage to be constructed. The choir visited us to have a practice, an occasion we reckon is probably a one off, as you don’t often see a full formal choir singing in a factory.

We’re at Waitomo

The new Waitomo Caves Visitor Centre has been built using NelsonPine LVL. Christopher Kelly from Architecture Workshop says LVL gave them a way of using timber in a more structurally sophisticated form. He says with Hunters now able to treat the product after fabrication, there are even more opportunities for exterior use.

“With the Waitomo project we initially started out trying to make an organic shape that responded to the landscape and the Waitomo stream by using small pieces of locally grown timber,” he explains. “Pine grows too fast to be strong so this laminating veneer process adds enormous value to the material.”

The structure for the Waitomo Caves Visitor Centre was calculated by Alistair Cattanach at Dunning Thornton Consultants and has been peer reviewed in London by Happold Structural Engineers, who commented favourably on the strengths achieved with LVL.

Christopher says NelsonPine LVL is a sustainable ‘touch-friendly’ material with great structural potential both by itself and in combination with other materials such as steel cables.

“We hope New Zealand can develop its expertise with LVL - in fact all things timber, so we can add much more value to the raw materials that grow so abundantly in ‘godzone’,” Chris says. “By adding that local inventiveness that we pride ourselves on, we can become world leaders.”.

Pine pays local wages

A new joiners shop in Richmond near the NPIL plant, was designed as a steel construction, but there was a shift in the plans when neighbour Stuart Flowerday from Trubet Holdings Ltd heard about that.

“Why should we import steel from Australia to line the pockets of some millionaire, when we have pine trees planted, pruned, milled, transported and processed here in Nelson, paying local wages and contributing to our own economy?” he says. “I am anti-steel and LVL is a great replacement for it.”

Richard Dohman (pictured) from Prestige Joinery says the use of LVL gave them the span they wanted, without resorting to steel: “There are no ledges for dust to gather which is a plus, and the use of wood ties in with what we’re doing here.”

GoldenEdge MUF Primed Mouldings

A trend in the building industry toward primed products has seen Nelson Pine Industries introduce a range of primed mouldings to complement the existing “raw” range of GoldenEdge MUF mouldings.

Sold at a premium price, prime mouldings save the end-user two undercoats and a de-nib in between coats, meaning the job can be completed faster. As they say in the building industry “time is money”.

Two of Nelson Pine Industries Ltd major national distributors, Mitre 10 and ITM, both stock the GoldenEdge range of raw mouldings, but have to source an ever increasing demand for the primed product from another supplier. By providing a range of primed mouldings ourselves, we are now ideally placed to maintain existing sales of raw mouldings and to expand into the primed market with these two key distributors.

At this stage only 13 profiles are being offered primed, but it is hoped to expand the range once a strong base of sales has been established. The mouldings are being primed off-site by Southern Pine Products, in Christchurch, utilising the paint line that they have installed to prime timber products.

‘Remarkable adventures in God.’
The City Impact Church is using our LVL to build their new church in Queenstown. Hunters (1998) Ltd in Beach Road supplied the framing "package", for which NelsonPine LVL was determined to be the best product for the rafters because of its consistency and strength. Set in New Zealand’s adventure capital it is known as a church of remarkable adventures in God!