Comact making big inroads into Australian sawmilling

Comact making big inroads into Australian sawmilling

Friday 15 Feb 2013

This year Red Stag Timber in Rotorua is expected to produce around 400,000m3 of sawn timber. Last year Comact, a Canadian company that has specialised in the sawmilling industry since the last century, installed its first vision system into New Zealand in the Rotorua mill. Comact replaced the existing transverse 3D scanner with a new true shape and colour vision board edger optimizer that picks up corewood in boards to optimise sawing.

The success of the first installation has led to two other Comact systems being installed; the TrimExpert as a trimmer optimiser in the sawmill and the GradExpert using transverse scanning in the drymill to grade dry boards from the planer mill. The controls on the bin sorter are also being done by Comact to tie in with the mills optimisation package.

All up the New Zealand operation has spent around $9 million and the Canadian company according to sawmill manager Steve Roberts has certainly proved its worth providing specialised sawmilling equipment suited to the mill and the species being sawn, Radiata pine. The timeframe from decision to commissioning was about six months.

Scanning and sawmill optimisation is a major focus with WoodEXPO 2013 in Australia and New Zealand in September this year. In addition to the latest developments in vision optimisation from Comact, other major North American and European technology providers will be down for the series. One company has just confirmed that they will be speaking for the first time on a complete 360° (3D) full length carriage scanner (patent pending). Details on the programme will be available shortly for all local sawmilling and manufacturing companies.

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