The current series of forest machine operator skills development courses run by the UK Forest Products Association and Barony College have been completed.
The successful assessments of final trainees Stephen Gibson and Iain Amos mean the course has achieved a 100% pass rate. Their training included a six week practical session, followed by two weeks of intensive in-college instruction.
UKFPA executive director David Sulman hopes another course will be run in 2011.
“But as we all know, providing training of this type is necessarily very expensive,” he said. “After all, that’s why no-one else is doing it in the UK.
“As a consequence, we are reliant on external funding to fill the funding gap and further courses will depend on the availability of funding from the Scotland Rural Development Programme.”
Forestry Commission Scotland provided the harvesting site and forwarder, and John Deere Forestry UK supplied a harvester. In addition, the college’s own forwarder has also been used to good effect.
