Local logger Shane Jordan balances wood chopping and business

Shane Jordan with his wife Loren and their three children.

A world champion wood chopper has made a career out of his talent.

Shane Jordan has been competitively wood chopping for 18 years, and for the past nine years has also been operating a logging, firewood and saw milling business.

He says he started woodchopping purely as "something to do" and soon got hooked on the competitive nature of the sport.

"I got more competitive and then started travelling overseas. I wanted to be the best."

Shane has competed on many world stages including Sydney, America, Spain, Norway, Austria, Germany and Poland. He has come home with six titles over the years, three for individual events and others for a team event.

"I won a 14-inch standing block in Hokitika, a 15-inch underhand in Rotorua and a 15-inch underhand in Christchurch. My world titles were won in Austria, Germany and Norway.

Shane says that his business and competitive wood chopping go in well together.

"You never stop learning."

Shane isn't the only competitive wood chopper at his business. Two of his workers also compete, and having plenty of wood to practice on is helpful he says.

"We can grab training wood off my site when we want to practise for a competition."

Shane says the key to juggling his competitive wood chopping and the business is organisation.

"The last competition I did was STHL Timber sports at Mystery Creek Fieldays. For this, we were finishing an hour earlier at work than normal to get home to do more training. We were doing what we needed to do to win."

That paid off, with Shane winning the title. Staff member Jesse Whitehead placed third. Shane's brother Jack won the Rookies event.

Shane will now be heading to Prague in October to compete as the New Zealand Champion and part of the New Zealand team.

Over the past year and a half, Shane and his wife Loren have extended their business, developing a yard on Orlando street and purchasing new machinery.

Shane says the business now operates two excavators, one skidder and a de-limber, meaning they can take on even more work.

"The core of my business is logging but we also produce firewood, sawdust and saw milling. I like being able to use what we do. I keep my guys out of the bush when it rains, my workers full up the sheds at the yard on rainy days."

Shane says just as the support of his family is essential when it comes to entering competitions, the same is true of the business and it's Loren who delivers the majority of the firewood the business sells as well as maintaining the Facebook page.

"We find we get a lot of business through Messenger on our business Facebook page, so we keep quite busy responding to those queries and orders."

Shane says his goal is to have 1800 cube in the shed.

"The wood goes out faster than we can fill it almost."