Scottish cluster learns from New Zealand’s success

The New Zealand timber industry was held up as a role model for Scotland at last week’s second forest industry conference in Crieff.

Organised by the Scottish Forest Industries Cluster, the conference was told how New Zealand’s forest industry is seen as a critical economic resource, with timber the third largest contributor to the country’s GDP output.

Stefan Kay, chairman of the Cluster’s leadership group, said: “This is the level of business we should be striving to build Scotland’s timber industry into. We have the potential and we’re making progress. As a nation we need to start treating forestry as one of our biggest potential assets.”

Investment in timber processing in Scotland has averaged £100m over the past 10 years and it provides more than 40,000 related jobs.

But one issue that must be faced, said Mr Kay, was that there was not as yet a nationally structured training standards programme unlike in New Zealand where training runs from foundation courses through to MSc and forestry engineering degrees.

Speakers from Finland told the conference about their country’s timber sector development and delegates also heard about the creation of a Centre for Timber Engineering at Napier University.

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