Equipment repossessed from beleaguered forestry firm

A Northland Regional Councillor has claimed some forestry workers were forced walk 30km from isolated sites after being made redundant. Photo: Glenn Taylor.

A major financier has repossessed equipment from the owner of forestry business HarvestPro New Zealand.

An official from GE Finance and Insurance in Auckland said equipment located in Auckland, Gisborne and Northland was repossessed from the company KFI Asset Management.

Frederika Wall, GE Finance and Insurance spokeswoman confirmed the action which she said took place last week.

Companies Office records showed HarvestPro New Zealand is fully owned by Kiwi Forestry International.

"It is anticipated that the equipment will be marketed for sale in the coming weeks," Wall said.

Earlier today a Northland Regional Councillor expressed fears for the futures of 100 forestry staff who worked for the forestry giant in his area.

Joe Carr said he was now trying to help the workers to get new jobs "albeit temporarily" because they were laid off suddenly this week, some stranded in forests 20km to 30km from home and made to walk out.

For the last few days, media has been reporting problems with HarvestPro and Carr said people were contacting him to try to get work.

Those he knew who arrived with chainsaws and equipment on Monday but had their work vehicle keys taken and told to walk from the sites, he said.

Some operations were 20km to 30km from where people lived.

Trouble has hit the area in the midst of the hotly contested by-election which has focused all eyes on Northland.

HarvestPro has big Northland and Gisborne area operations and is headquartered in Auckland.

Attempts to contact the business have so far been unsuccessful and phones have been ringing unanswered.

The company describes itself as an efficient business.

"HarvestPro NZ Ltd has a total of 14 crews harvesting in both the East Coast (Gisborne) region and Northland (Bay of Island and surrounding districts).

"We employ over 200 staff. HPNZ is a large independent company of highly skilled, experienced harvesters.

"Our current customer base and positioning within the industry ensures we provide you with the latest in leading edge technology. Our service is extremely competitive, including harvesting woodlots and commercial forests.

"HPNZ utilises hauler and groundbase systems to extract the wood," HarvestPro says.

Carr said he was particularly concerned about people who had worked for Harvestpro in his area.

"These were employees and I'm sending them to other forestry businesses to try to find work. There's a lot of networking going on right now," he said, estimating the business had employed around 100 people in his region.

"It's pretty considerable and then of course you have all the support businesses like engineering contractors and maintenance people and I dare say they're struggling to meet their commitments because if they've provided services, they've had to buy in stuff to do it. The ripple effect will be significant," Carr said.

"The structural issue up here is if your forest is outside the 100km radius from Whangarei port or a processing plant, it's pretty marginal.

"Most of the operators are pretty small except for Junken," he said of the Japanese forestry giant, heavily involved with the New Zealand forestry and wood-processing industries for the past 20 years.

But Carr expressed wider fears for the sector in Northland.

"Large areas of forestry are not being replanted because it's not economically viable, particularly around the Hokianga and Kawakawa, there's thousands of hectares of there. If the replant doesn't happen in North Hokianga, that's a cost of $500 million," he said, although others had put the cost to closer $800 million.

"A financier just turned up like a military operation on Monday. They relocated the machinery down to Taupo," Carr said.