The New Zealand government and forestry industry have agreed to expand their work aimed at encouraging more wood processing.
A common strategy will identify barriers to wood processing investment and ways to remove them. Forest products are currently the country’s third biggest export area but they are predicted to jump into first place by 2025, when the industry could be generating more than NZ$14bn.
Economic development minister Jim Anderton said higher value export markets need to be developed, along with an expansion of value-added wood processing facilities, in order to keep up with the rapid growth in size of plantation forests.
The current limited investment in wood processing means a large portion of logs has to be shipped abroad for value added processing.
