Forestry door stays closed

A closed-door meeting in Auckland was the latest effort to build bridges between disparate groups in the fractious forestry industry.

About 45 people attended the meeting in Auckland last month and another is to be held before Christmas.

The meeting was a separate initiative to an earlier event in Wellington that was designed to ease bad feeling in the industry.

Forest owners and wood processors at the latter meeting agreed not to talk publicly about it.

The Business Herald understands that Rick Christie, former chief executive of Trade New Zealand and now the chairman of the Government's Growth and Innovation Advisory Board, has become a facilitator for the group.

The first meeting was an initiative by Bryce Heard, chief executive of Forest Research, Peter Berg, president of the New Zealand Forest Owners Association, Stuart McKinlay, a senior adviser to Pan Pac Forest Products, and Wayne Coffey, of the Timber Industry Federation.

The second meeting was of a wider group and talked of how to better organise the industry.

There was no commitment to the idea of a new pan-industry organisation - or the idea pushed within parts of the industry of a levy to complement government funding to develop new markets.

The industry has many lobby and marketing groups and a history of bad feeling between wood suppliers and users.

But the sector's structure is changing with the breakdown of large integrated forestry companies such as Fletcher Challenge Forests and the arrival of specialist global fund managers.

Harvard University's endowment fund is now the largest forest owner in the country and does not invest in wood processing.

The industry's efforts to work together include co-ordinating the logistics and marketing of log exports in a venture known as Silva.

Silva aims to better organise log ship charters - and stop New Zealand companies knocking one another out in export markets.

The diverse players

* New Zealand Forest Owners Association.
* New Zealand Farm Forestry Association.
* New Zealand Timber Industry Federation.
* New Zealand Pine Manufacturers Association.
* Forest Contractors Association.
* New Zealand Forest Industries Council.
* Forest Research.
* New Zealand Institute of Forestry.
* Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.