Highlands Sawmill prospers with Wood-Mizer

Wood-Mizer: Lee Pauls, Wood-Mizer RSA machine sales manager with Jeff Hogg of Highlands Sawmill.

A Wood-Mizer MP360 Planer Moulder combine forces with two Wood-Mizer sawmilling lines at Highlands Sawmill in KwaZulu-Natal – to drive profitability up even more.

The road to Harding in KwaZulu-Natal where Highlands Sawmill is located, passes through some of the most scenic landscapes in South Africa. Green pastures and plantations are framed by the Ingeli and Drakensberg Mountain ranges in the distance with timber and cattle farms dotting the banks of the wide rivers that cross through the area.

Highlands Sawmill is located in one of the many fertile valleys outside Harding, an inland farming town, that is also home to the vast Weza and Singisi Forests from where large amounts of sawn timber depart for trade both locally and internationally.

The sawmill is located on a third-generation timber and cattle farm owned by the Hogg family. Geoff Hogg, the current custodian of the farm, added to timber that his father first planted with some 740 hectares now set aside for timber production.

The areas on the farm planted to pine and eucalyptus produce logs for furniture and structural grade timber. CCA treated poles that are produced on the farm are for agricultural applications and fibre for paper production as part of Highlands Sawmills’ membership of Sappi’s out-grower scheme.

Wood-Mizer Sawmills and MP360 Planer Moulder drive production

The 2018 start-up of the Wood-Mizer MP360 Planer Moulder at Highlands Sawmill added to the sharp increase in production capacity that followed the mill’s commissioning of two Wood-Mizer sawmilling lines in 2016 and 2017.

Gerhard Pretorius, Highland Sawmills’ sawmill manager, fast-tracked the process to use Wood-Mizer technology as the backbone for the increases in output and recovery at the mill. The two sawmill lines work in tandem to produce sawn timber for distribution to factories and hardware centres throughout KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and beyond.

Line 1 uses a Wood-Mizer LT70 Remote with an outfeed conveyor and transfer deck to a Wood-Mizer EG300 edger to produce accurately sawn, 6m structural timber lengths from maximum log diameters of up to 950mm.

Line 2 is built around a Wood-Mizer Twin Vertical Saw (TVS) and HR700 Multi-Head resaw. This line processes Highland Timber’s small diameter pine logs that range in size from 150 to 250mm and up to 4.8m in length to make furniture grade sawn timber.

Progressive and compartment kilns are used for drying while Wood-Mizer blade maintenance equipment allows Highlands Sawmill to maintain their own blades to the high standards that they require.

Source: Timber IQ

NOTE: Permission to use or reproduce this content must be approved by the publisher of Timber IQ.