OPERATION FOCUS ISSUE 24 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011
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Editorial Director John Chadwick
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Chris Cann
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Editorial Board Dr Patrick Moore – Chairman and Chief Scientist of Greenspirit (Canada)
Darren Oldham – Managing Director Söderhamn Eriksson (UK)
Allan Hansard – Chief Executive of the National Association of Forest Industries (Australia)
Professor Piotr Paschalis-Jakubowicz – Warsaw Agricultural University (Poland)
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EDITOR’S COMMENT Has worm started to turn?
to get hold of opinions and foresight but unfortunately, the last few years have generated more questions and anxiety than confidence. The latter one needs to make big statements.
M Those silly enough to pin their
reputations on predictions have largely been made to look ignorant and so, at the risk of being labelled conservative, I ask another question: are the first signs of true change in our industry here? Unlike those reading this, I do not have the benefit of frontline industry experience on which to form a view but, also unlike most readers, I have access to an extraordinary amount of newsflow. It is a change in this newsflow that has led to the question above. There are two stories in particular – singled out amongst thousands and selected for this edition of International Forest Industries – that got me thinking: the Company Focus piece on harvester heads manufacturer SP Maskiner (p. 16); and our High Profile interview with Joey Nelson from JoeScan (p. 22). It wasn’t just what was included in these
features that got me thinking but what was absent – a distinct focus on efficiencies and cost cutting measures. This issue has dominated our pages for much of our brief history (our first edition was launched at the end of 2007).
In its place was a comforting mix of optimism and growth-related product news. SP, for example, tells a story of bigger and more robust heads that are capturing the burgeoning eucalyptus markets, mainly in the Southern Hemisphere. This is a welcome change from another thinning model designed to help loggers salvage revenue by working on the biomass sector.
Not only that, but the company surprisingly reported that its sales growth was increasing rapidly – keeping pace with emerging eucalyptus markets – in Europe for both thinning and mid-sized heads. It is
any readers are probably sick of me littering this editorial space with questions. Most readers like
also working on products for North America and Russia where it sees opportunities for another generation of growth. The Russian portion of that news is hardly surprising but the fact that SP is actively targeting North American operations could be taken as a sign that that market is set for an improvement. That is precisely how Joey Nelson sees it. He said the US housing market had bottomed and was due to push forward and sawmills would move onto bigger and better things. The products under development now reflect this. JoeScan is not focusing on lowering costs and improving efficiencies per se – though I dare say this is never far from any manufacturers mind – but has returned speed to the head of the priority list along with a product application that will make technology simpler to install. This second innovation is admittedly targeted at saving money but it does so by applying cutting edge technology that requires up front investment. I’ve previously questioned whether we
were at the bottom of this industry slump but that was based on the fairly indisputable knowledge that things really couldn’t get much worse. To question if the worm has truly started to turn after three years of hardship is far more speculative. So it will remain a question. Those with a more damning perspective on our industry are those who run harvesting operations, sawmills and biomass businesses and I would encourage anyone with an answer or even part answer to my question to contact me. For now though, I hope you’ll enjoy the slightly more bullish opinion in the pages of this edition of IFI.
Enjoy
Chris Cann Editor
2 International Forest Industries | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011
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