Friday Offcuts – 12 April 2013
Click to Subscribe - It's FREE! Again this week we have some great technology related articles for forestry and wood products companies; houses designed with algorithms, printed out in carbon-fibre form from a three-dimensional printer and built by robots expected to be built within the year, a commercial operation, the first of its type in the world that can separate lignin from wood pulp and a video outlining the opportunities of using wood fibres – nanocellulose - for producing a range of new high tech materials.There have been some interesting discussions in Canada this week after the Government announced that they want to cut back on paper use. They’re planning on trimming paper consumption in most Government departments by 20 per cent over the next couple of years. As one commentator said, “Canada is forests and paper … and that by rejecting paper, the Government is turning its back on the industry and its product..." Just how much paper is at stake here is mind boggling. In 2011 the Department of Justice Canada for example was estimated to have used around 50 million printed pages amongst the roughly 4,000 workers listed as being employed by the department at the time. This is an interesting move and will prove I suspect to be an enthralling campaign from the forestry, wood products and print industries over the next few months. For your information, an initiative to promote the responsible production and use of print and paper and dispel some of the common environmental misconceptions out there has been set up called ‘Two Sides'. The international Two Sides network now spans 14 countries with more than 1,000 members. Check out the website and resources on offer here. As we’re big into numbers, check out the story this week on just how big the growing CleanTech sector is. Some of these new and emerging low-carbon technologies were discussed at this week’s FIEA Residues to Revenues 2013 event in Auckland and will be touched on again in Melbourne on Monday. In Australia, the CleanTech sector (renewable energy, water, waste and recycling, energy efficiency and carbon trading) according to a new study boasts revenues of AU$29 billion a year. Yes - that's the figure being reported. This makes CleanTech industries larger than Australia’s automotive manufacturing industry and one quarter the size of the country’s entire manufacturing sector. The message is pretty clear. CleanTech technologies are going to be playing an even more significant role in both Australia’s and New Zealand’s economies in this and in future years.
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This week we have for you:
Australian cleantech sector tips AU$30bn
The Australian cleantech sector boasts revenue of AU$29 billion a year and employs 53,000 people, making it larger than Australia’s automotive manufacturing industry and one quarter the size of the country’s entire manufacturing sector.A new study produced by research and advisory firm Australian CleanTech says an analysis of 1,340 Australian cleantech firms shows they were involved in capital transactions totalling AU$1.3 billion in the 2012 calendar year in 126 separate capital transactions. Australian Cleantech Review 2013 says the cleantech sector, which is defined as products and services that have both economic and environmental benefits, and includes renewable energy, water, waste and recycling, energy efficiency and carbon trading, employs five times as many people per dollar of revenue than general manufacturing. The big growth sectors were in solar, water, energy efficiency and green buildings. NSW and Victoria were the most active states, with the water, wind, solar and environmental services sectors all generating more than AU$1 billion in revenue in the last calendar year. Queensland and WA had comparatively little cleantech activity because they focused on mining. Despite accounting for just 0.07 per cent of the total number of registered companies, just 0.7 per cent of the listed company market capitalisation and only 0.5 per cent of the working population, the cleantech sector generated 2.0 per cent of the country’s GDP in 2012, up from 1.8 per cent in 2011. The report includes some forecasts for the cleantech trends for 2013. The highlights include a prediction that Australia is heading for an emissions trading scheme, rather than a fixed carbon price, whichever party wins government, and that cleantech, largely misunderstood or ignored in Australia, despite its growing size, will come to the attention of more people in 2013, particularly to customers and investors. And it predicts growing interest in investment from China and South Korea, which it describes as a significant opportunity for the Australian clean-tech sector. Source: reneweconomy Gunns' plantations to be put on marketMore than 200,000 hectares of timber plantations established by the collapsed Tasmanian company Gunns are being put on the market according to ABC News. Gunns' liquidator has abandoned a plan to sell the trees as a single entity, leaving the future of its proposed Tamar Valley pulp mill and millions of dollars’ worth of investor funds up in the air.Liquidator PPB Advisory had previously said it was in talks with parties interested in taking over management of the multi-million dollar investment schemes. It is believed Macquarie Group and the company WA Blue Glum were among them. Now the liquidator has told investors it has walked away from those talks and a court-approved sale process is in the best interests of growers. The liquidator expects to make the application to sell the plantations in the Victorian Supreme Court in the coming weeks. C$30.4 million in funding for forest industryThe Canadian federal Minister of Natural Resources was in Prince George last week to make a major funding announcement for the forest industry. Minister Joe Oliver spoke to those attending the Council of Forest Industries Convention."We will be investing 10.9 million dollars in 2013-14 to help forest companies tap into new and emerging markets. I'm also pleased to announce that we are investing 19.5 million dollars to commercialize ground-breaking new technology in five projects here in western Canada." Oliver says the "new and emerging market" includes a Canadian wood products trade office in India. Eucalypt forestry initiative supported in NZ
A national forestry initiative with roots in Marlborough has again been successful in its bid to the Sustainable Farming Fund.The New Zealand Dryland Forests Initiative (NZDFI), which is establishing forests of genetically improved durable eucalypts in New Zealand’s driest regions, will get NZ$216,000 of SFF funding towards a three year programme worth over half a million dollars. Project manager Paul Millen said the “fantastic” news would see the five-year old initiative extended to new landowners and regions, with a focus on species specific management of the existing and new blocks. “The past five years have seen us establish over 120,000 trees in research trials from Bay of Plenty to North Canterbury. The key to this project is in helping our landowners and growers get optimal success from the trees.” That includes research and training in silviculture, he said. The project will look at the potential of the chosen eucalypt species on various sites to produce pole and post wood from short rotations. One of NZDFI’s major aims is to create hardwood posts to replace CCA treated pine in New Zealand vineyards and orchards. More >> Loss widens for Carter Holt's Australian Building SuppliesCarter Holt Harvey, the forest products firm owned by billionaire Graeme Hart, has worn a AU$264 million charge on its Australian building supplies group, which widened its loss by 80 percent last year and left it in negative equity.Building Supplies Group Holdings, an Australian unit of the combined Carter Holt group, made a loss of AU$326.5 million in the 12 months ended Dec. 31, compared to a loss of AU$181.7 million a year earlier, according to financial statements lodged with the Australian Securities & Investments Commission. That included a AU$264.1 million impairment charge on Building Supplies’ Woodproducts Timber and Plywood businesses, amid "continued difficult trading conditions," director Helen Goulding said in the directors' report. Building Supplies booked an AU$129.7 million impairment charge on Woodproducts Australia Timber business goodwill in 2011, reflecting the "prolonged deterioration in the profitability of this component of the group," the statements said. More >>. Dump paper to save trees
Newly released reports on plans and priorities for dozens of Canadian federal departments and agencies show paper-loving bureaucrats are slowly trying to reduce their environmental footprint by cutting their printing output each year.Yet, federal employees are still printing hundreds of millions of pages a year as part of their day-to-day duties. The average employee in some federal departments uses more than 12,000 sheets of paper a year — in excess of 50 sheets per workday — and the government is looking to chop the number of sheets and trees civil servants use in their daily work. As Ottawa slowly moves toward going paperless, the government is looking to trim paper consumption in most departments by 20 per cent over a couple of years and cut the number of printers used in federal offices by as much as 75 per cent. The federal reports show workers in the Department of Justice Canada, for example, each consumed an average of 12,999 sheets of internal office paper a year as of March 31, 2011 (most recent data available). That amounts to potentially more than 50 million pages printed in one year for the roughly 4,000 workers listed as being employed by the department at the time. Treasury Board president Tony Clement has said he’s working on having the federal government slowly go paperless by using tablet-style computers and other new-age technology available to politicians and bureaucrats. Check out this website for the paper story, www.twosides.us. The Ottawa Citizen 86% vote supports NZ forest levyAs reported in last week’s issue, a referendum of New Zealand forest growers has shown strong support for a levy on harvested forest products.“We have been given the thumbs-up to introduce a funding system that will provide greater certainty, equity and commitment for activities that benefit all growers, such as research, promotion and forest health,” says Forest Growers Levy Trust chair Geoff Thompson. “At this stage, we expect the levy to be introduced on 1 January 2014.” The audited referendum results reveal that 502 growers (86.3%) voted yes and 80 (13.7%) voted no. There was the same percentage support when the votes were weighted by area, with 947,762.71 hectares (86.3%) in favour and 149,926.91 ha (13.7%) opposed. Mr Thompson said having identical percentages for voters and area was “simply a fluke”. Under the Commodity Levies Act, for the levy to proceed it must have the support by number and by area of more than 50% of those forest owners who voted. The Trust believes the turnout was about 15 per cent of an estimated 4000 eligible voters. Their votes represent more than two-thirds of the eligible forest area. “This was quite a good turnout, compared with other recent primary sector referenda,” says Mr Thompson. “The key message is that those who will be paying the vast majority of the levy are strongly in favour of it. This is the green light we had to see before we progressed any further. Now we can get on with groundwork and consultation that is still needed before we can ask the Minister for Primary Industries to put a Levy Order in place.” The ForestVoice website www.forestvoice.org.nz will continue to update the forest industry on levy progress.
Rethink trees - opportunities with nanotechnologyThis video outlines the versatility of wood but delves into the real opportunities open to using wood fibres - nanocellulose - a key component for a range of new high tech materials.World first for Swedish environmental technologyOn 12 March, the North American pulp and paper company Domtar announced that it had started the operation of a facility for separating lignin from the process at its pulp mill in Plymouth, North Carolina. The facility is the first of its kind in the world on a commercial scale, based on the LignoBoost technology developed by Swedish research company Innventia and researchers at Chalmers University of Technology.The successful installation of the LignoBoost facility represents the culmination of a research and technology project that Domtar began in 2010. BioChoice lignin is Domtar’s name for the product, and production in Plymouth – capacity around 75 tonnes per day – began in February this year. The lignin is intended to be used for a wide range of industrial applications, for example as a bio-based alternative to oil and other fossil fuels, or as raw material for other materials. LignoBoost is a unique and effective process for extracting high-quality lignin from kraft pulp mills, and has generated a great deal of interest – both in Sweden and internationally. The technology has been developed since the late 1990s by Innventia in Stockholm, in association with Chalmers University of Technology, within the framework of three research programmes. In 2008, Innventia sold the LignoBoost concept to the technology company Metso, which is now delivering the first facility to Domtar. “It’s extremely gratifying to see the technology being installed on a full scale,” says Innventia’s Per Tomani, one of the people behind LignoBoost. “Having worked on this right from the beginning, it’s a very special day when production goes live. Lots of people have been involved in the various R&D activities along the way, and I’m sure they all feel the same way too.” The technology is being continuously improved. Metso and Innventia have been working together since 2008 to refine the technology and to develop new lignin applications in partnership with potential customers. Lignin is one of the main focus areas for Innventia’s research and development, and the work is being carried out in association with customers within the industry. “It would be fantastic if this were to represent a reversal of the trend,” continues Per. “It creates opportunities for developing kraft pulp mills into modern biorefineries that can supply large volumes of products in addition to the traditional fibre products and by-products – primarily tall oil and electricity.
3D printing of houses – fact or fiction?
What are they? Houses designed with algorithms, printed out in carbon-fibre form from a three-dimensional printer and built by robots. Advances in computer programming, 3D printing and robotics have opened the door to exciting new architectural forms made from lightweight composite materials such as carbon fibre, fibreglass and Kevlar.The spin-offs include less waste (there are few, if any, off-cuts from a 3D printer), improved energy savings and efficient lightweight structures (using algorithms from natural systems) that can be built where it wasn't previously feasible (sheer cliffs, floating structures on the ocean). Will it work? Yes. A printer that spits out 25-centimetre-cubed objects now costs less than $2000 and the race is on to build the first 3D printed house, which could happen in the next year. RMIT has bought two industrial robots (the kind you see on car manufacturing lines) and experiments are underway to adapt them for building construction. This technology along with a numnber of other "ground-breaking technologies" that have the potential to change how we are processing and manufacturing our wood will be the focus for the upcoming Wood Processing Summit being planned as part of the WoodEXPO 2013 series running in both Australia and New Zealand in mid September. Further details will follow shortly. Source: The Age Changes at PöyryPöyry is an international consulting and engineering company headquartered in Helsinki Finland. They have clients in the energy, forest industry, chemicals & bio-refining, mining & metals, transportation, water and real estate sectors with 100 offices in 50 countries.Recently, the company decided to strengthen its Asia Pacific management consulting operations. Oceania, supported by Jakarta, will be positioned as the company’s Asia Pacific centre of excellence in land, forest, wood products and woody bioenergy. Thailand (Bangkok) provides their main energy hub, and China (Shanghai) the regional centre of excellence for the company in pulp and paper. All these hubs have strong links to Europe (Finland, UK, Russia), Latin America (Brazil) and North America (US, Canada). The changes for the Australasian operations mean stronger integration with their Asia Pacific regional offices and their office addresses in both Auckland and Melbourne remain unchanged. Trucking industry leaders elected to ATATwo leaders of the Australian trucking industry, Geoff Crouch and Tim Knowles were elected to the board of the Australian Trucking Association (ATA) at its annual general meeting on Wednesday.The ATA is the body representing the trucking industry throughout Australia. Its members include state and sector trucking associations, major logistics companies and businesses with leading expertise in truck technology. Geoff Crouch is the Managing Director of Ron Crouch Transport, a family owned business based in Wagga Wagga. It has more than 750 customers and a company fleet of 30 trucks and 47 trailers. The company is a member of the ATA’s TruckSafe safety accreditation program. Mr Crouch is also the president of NatRoad. Tim Knowles is the Operations Manager of Speedie Contractors in Brisbane, after working there as a driver from 1975 to 1992. Speedie Contractors operates 32 rigid trucks and prime movers in the road surfacing sector of the industry. He has been a board member of the Queensland Trucking Association for the last fifteen years. Jobs
Buy and Sell
...and one to end the week on...the Australian salesman
A young Aussie lad moved to London and went to Harrods looking for a job. And on that note, head off fishing and have a great weekend.
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