More Information
7.6 Setting logging rates
Authors: Rien VisserPublication: NZIF Forestry Handbook, Volume Section 7 – Harvesting, pp 6, Dec 2023
Publisher: New Zealand Institute of Forestry
Abstract: imber harvesting has always been a significant business cost component for forest owners and or forestry management companies. Maintaining a cost-effective harvesting workforce is a major task for many forestry companies; and operating a financially successful harvesting business is also a major challenge for logging contractors. With increased global competition for wood based products there has been real pressure on reducing the cost of harvesting. While this paper presents just a brief overview on the process of setting logging rate, there are some excellent NZ based resources that can provide more details on actually business processes. A comprehensive manual, called the Business Management for Logging, has been updated in 2020 and can be downloaded from the Forest Growers Research website (www.fgr.nz). Logging rate information is captured in an FGR programme, carried out by the School of Forestry, called the Benchmarking Cost and Productivity Database, which has tracked logging rates for over 12 years. Other resources are posted on the NZ Forest Engineering (http://forestengineering.org) webpage and this includes costing models and details of recent research work. Harvesting has evolved from manual labour with basic tools to a high capital equipment cost and low labour input system. In modern operations labour may amount to only about 30% of the total operating cost and the effective utilization of the specialised equipment becomes paramount. Technological advances in equipment and systems have resulted in incremental improvements in logging efficiency. However, there have also been real cost increases (over and above inflation) and these have included labour rates, raw materials and insurance.