Dear Guest,

End of year message from our GM

It’s been 1 year since being privileged with the role of AFCA’s General Manager. I’m as motivated as ever to ensure this Association has the voice it deserves and that we continue to focus on the needs of our members. It has been a very busy year, not only touching base with our membership, but getting to understand the needs of our members. We have kicked off some key initiatives that will continue into 2023:

Sustainable Contracts Working Group

The group was established in June to develop a minimum set of industry endorsed terms which will allow contractors to not only be successful and sustainable, but to drive innovation and safety. The contract intends to incentivise all parties at all times, and most importantly, be fair.

The group will continue to meet both online and in person throughout 2023 as is represented by members from all membership states.

Mass Management Scheme – National Working Group

AFCA commissioned a desktop assessment in early 2022 to inform the membership of the current inconsistencies that exist in the application of mass management infringements. In many states this has become a significant issue, even causing staff turnover and financial penalty.

During the recent member workshops held in Traralgon, it was determined that a national approach to this issue was desired. As such, we will be calling on expressions of interest for a working group in the new year to help shape a recommendation to the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) and those who impose such restrictive operational barriers on contracting hauliers.

The NHVR will form part of the working group and have already nominated a working group member.

Inaugural Mentoring Program

AFCA is pleased to be offering a tailored and professionally facilitated Mentoring program during 2023. Expressions of interest are out and we look forward to receiving nominations for those who feel they have something to give back to the industry, mentors, and those who feel they have something to learn, mentees. I am also so excited to be working again with the wonderful Michelle Redfern, who will be facilitating this project throughout the year.

To ensure the absolute most of this program, AFCA has partnered with PACCAR Australia. Each participant will be entitled to access this program free of charge with numerous networking events throughout the year. For those interested, please keep an eye out for further information below.

Membership Growth and Update

AFCA has experienced a huge amount of growth throughout the year and there is potential for this to continue into 2023. We cannot thank our existing members enough for their continued support and we welcome the opportunity to work with and alongside our new members into 2023. Continued support from our members allows us the resources to provide more services to the industry. We have many new initiatives in the new year, including a proposed national insurance deal.

We will continue to provide our popular webinar series and field days which were well received throughout 2022. If you have any topics you wish to have covered, please reach out to me anytime.

Log Haulage Code of Practice (LHCoP)

The final draft of the LHCoP is anticipated to be released for targeted consultation early in the new year. Industry groups such as AFCA will be asked to prepare a response to the draft in consultation with its members. We are advised that it will not be an open consultation process.

AFCA has been working closely with the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator on the code and will continue to do so up until this release. We have also extended an invitation to conduct a series of educational sessions with the NHVR throughout Australia once the code is released on the code itself but also responsibilities under the HVNL, especially in relation to Chain of Responsibility. A virtual session will also be available for those who cannot attend the sessions. Dates for these will be released in the new year, and after publication of the code.

AFCA Board

The AFCA Board remains committed to serving the members. As such, during the AGM in Traralgon, we welcomed back all of our directors and also received an additional nomination for returning Director, Ian Reid from Austimber Harvesting & Haulage Pty Ltd, Victoria. Ian brings a strategic financial background to the Board dynamic, as well as a focus on moving the ForestFit product forward.

Board makeup:

Adan Taylor (Chair, Finance and Audit Committee)
Ricky Leeson (Deputy Chair)
Christian Stafford
Lauren Carter
Dale Cameron
Tony Green
Michelle Corby (Finance and Audit Committee)
Wayne Shaw-Johnston
Ian Reid

The AFCA Board will continue to meet in varying regions throughout the year, beginning with Oberon, NSW during the first week in February. We aim to ensure members have the opportunity to meet with the Board and grow purposeful networks.

Skills and Training

AFCA is currently working exceptionally hard to ensure our members in Victoria who are currently facing significant challenges are well compensated and kept up to date with all industry movements.

As you can appreciate, these are very challenging times and as NSW and QLD members are facing the alternate issue of having significant skills and labour shortages and we have reached out to the membership in Victoria, and negotiated with VicForests to allow for a release of skilled labour through an agreement with the Principles.

AFCA is assisting to facilitate a level of dialogue here if you do have a current skills gap, and would like to participate in this process, please reach out so I am able to assist in linking you together.

Freight Task Management Training

AFCA will extend its commitment to safe operations and loading of vehicle by extending our relationship with Alan Pincott of Australian Trucking Safety Services & Solutions - ATSSS, and Kirstin Pincott of KJ Training & Consulting. The PODW sessions were a government funded program that informed the safe operations of haulage vehicles including understanding mental and physical impacts on decision making and performance.

We are pleased to extend this training to also include Chain of Responsibility, Roll-over prevention and Log Haulage Code of Practice units. Details to come in the new year.

Welcome to our New Members for 2022/23:

BRJ Logging Pty Ltd
Boss Forestry
Buckett Earthmoving Pty Ltd
B Williams Cartage
Curry Haulage
High Country Logging
JD Logging Pty Ltd
JR & SL Cook Transport Pty Ltd
Meyer Log Cartage Pty Ltd
Mountain Logging Pty Ltd
Reid Logging
Tiley Industries
TP Bennett & Sons
W & E Rouse
W & J Fenner Logging

AFCA office closure dates

The AFCA office will be closed from Friday 23^rd December 2022, and will re-open Monday 9th January 2023. The AFCA Board, Terese and I wish all of our members a wonderful and safe holiday season.

As always, please call anytime.

Kind regards,

Carlie Porteous

General Manager | Australian Forest Contractors Association

AND the winners are: AFCA 2022 Award Recipients

AFCA has a tradition of recognising and celebrating the important contribution those in our industry have made over a long period of time. This year, we celebrated our industry with our AGM and Hall of Fame dinner in Traralgon, Victoria on the 10th November 2022.

AFCA's board and staff celebrated 20 years representing Forestry Contracting Businesses across Australia and invited our members to join us to help celebrate.

This event is always a highlight in our members' calendars, and during covid, has been missed and as the evening kicked off with pre-dinner drinks with entertainment was provided throughout the evening from Comedian, Rodney Marks everyone was able to come together once again.

A great night was had by all!

CLICK HERE to view the evenings photo gallery.

AFCA Mentor program

Are you ready to help others grow and be successful, or are you wanting to grow and be successful?

This program is open to business leaders and emerging leaders in harvest, haulage, civil and silviculture sectors.

The program will:

Identify and pair mentors and mentees

Provide information and tool for successful mentoring
Provide structured sessions and check-ins
Provide networking opportunities

The program will support dialogue across the industry, improve business performance and sustainability, problem solve by helping others, impart knowledge and encourage innovation and leadership.

Make the most of mentoring:

Understand the interplay between external forces, industry trends, financial targets of the business and its internal capabilities in order to set, recommend and/or execute strategy.
Recognise and adjust to new threats to or opportunities within the existing strategy and industry environment.
Attract and retain a highly efficient workforce. Communicate the strategic plan effectively to get team buy in.
Explore the benefits of embedding succession planning into your business strategy.

Interested?

Just click on the link below to register your expression of interest in joining this program as either a MENTOR or MENTEE.

CLICK HERE

View the launch presentation by Michelle Redfern by clicking on the link below:

Supported by:

LV Dohnt Celebrates 90 years in Forestry

LV Dohnt & Co started back in 1932, transporting logs to the hardwood sawmill in the Bundaleer Forest in the Mid North of SA.

In 1937 they obtained their first contract, with the SA Woods & Forests Department, to transport pine logs from the Government forests to the Penola sawmill of Alf Donnelly. This original contract was for 2,700 m³ per year, and now they infield chip over 1.2 million GMT per year.

In the early days, trees were felled with bowsaws, trimmed with axes, crosscut with bow saw and the logs loaded onto the truck by hand.

Sadly chainsaws didn’t make an appearance until the 1950’s and became more common in the 60’s and in the late 1940’s was the crane truck made its first appearance and initially based on war-surplus military trucks.

L. V. Dohnt’s were in the forefront of the development of the design of the crane truck, and they were very proud of their efforts, as it was based on a good road truck with reasonable speed and load capacity.

The crane trucks were used until the mid1970’s, when the first forwarders appeared. In the large timber operations, the crane truck was replaced by the skidder, which was able to handle the large stems and logs which the forwarders of those days were not.

Dohnt's started mechanised first thinning harvesting in 1985 with a Steyr system in Sapfor forest. In the same year they were the first in the industry by setting up a mechanized system to handle clear felling for Sapfor. This original large-timber system was based on Koehring machinery, with separate feller buncher and processor.

In 1988 Dohnts moved into mechanised second thinning operations with a Valmet 902, which was a double grip harvester, which was the precursor to the single grip harvesters they use now.

By the late 1980’s the single grip harvester had become common in all harvesting operations except the very large clear fell. It wasn’t until 1995 that harvesters were available that could handle these larger trees. L V Dohnt stayed true to their manual fallers in this big timber operation until 2005, when their ForestrySA clear fell operation was the last major operation in the Green Triangle to change over to fully mechanized harvesting. Dohnt's ran an efficient manual operation for over 60 years and were there at the beginning and at the end of that era.

In 1991 L V Dohnt started a first thinning whole tree chipping operation, which was a new development and purchased the first Morbark flail chipper into Australia. The success of this operation has led to the growth of this phase of their business to now cover 6 chipping operations in the Green Triangle of SA and 5 chipping operations in Western Australia.

Phillip Dohnt (3^rd generation) is the current Managing Director with the focus on the 4^th generation, Mark Dohnt with the assistance of Gavin Dohnt taking the Company to is 100^th year celebration in 2032.

Phillip is very proud of the company’s achievements of surviving 90 years in the forestry business and the opportunities of growing the business in the future. This could not have been possible, and in the future will not be possible without the support and commitment made by each employee and their families.

The efforts and devotion of the past owners and directors should always be remembered, from the founder Laurence Victor Dohnt, Brothers Nat, Max, Morris and Kevin Dohnt and the 3^rd generation cousins Ivan and Brian Dohnt.

CONGRATULATIONS to Phil & the Team - Happy 90th Anniversary!

Federal Government’s recommitment to Regional Forest Agreements welcomed

The Federal Government’s commitment to retain Australia’s Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) is an endorsement of Australia’s sustainable forest practices and will be welcomed by forest industry workers around the country, Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA) Chief Executive Officer Ross Hampton said.

“Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s commitment today that RFAs are here to stay provides much-needed certainty to the tens of thousands of timber workers whose livelihoods depend on our sustainably managed timber industries that RFAs support,” Ross Hampton said.

Ross Hampton said industry stands ready to work with the Federal Government on ensuring that RFAs – and the robust state government environmental laws accredited under RFAs – continue to meet the objectives of the Environment Protection, Biodiversity and Conservation (EPBC) Act.

“Forestry operations in Australia are regulated to the highest environmental standards in the world, regenerating every harvested area to ensure no net loss of forested area whilst providing robust protections for threatened species,” Ross Hampton said.

“Since their inception, RFAs have ensured that the objectives of the EPBC Act are met by the robust state government environmental laws accredited under them. As the EPBC Act evolves to include National Environmental Standards, we welcome Minister Plibersek’s commitment to work with industry to ensure RFAs continue to meet the Act’s objectives.”

Ross Hampton said forest industries welcomed the Federal Government’s rejection of the bulk of Samuel’s recommendations around RFAs, which would have significantly undermined the continued operation of the hardwood timber industry and the national supply of many essential products.

“We are pleased that Minister Plibersek has reiterated the position of the former Coalition Government in recommitting to the continued operation of RFAs.

“We look forward to working with the Federal Government and the signatory states on sensible reforms to the RFAs so they continue to deliver the social and economic objectives that they were intended to provide timber workers and their communities, alongside the environmental objectives,” Ross Hampton concluded.

Source: AFCA Media Release 8 December 2022

A simple new tool developed by American researchers which can help forest equipment purchase decisions

Standard logging cost calculations methods have been developed in Europe, America and South Africa and Australia to assist the companies to compare different harvesting machines to understand when to replace them or determine to invest in which machine(s). Recently Drs Diniz and Sessions, forest operations researchers in America, have developed a simple tool to assist harvesting managers and logging contractors make a discounted cash flow for common investment task of comparing various harvesting purchasing alternatives. This tool is called Equipment Selection Problem Decisions Support (ESPDS) developed for Brazilian forest industry. As there some similarities between Brazilian and Australian forest equipment/stands the tool might work as a guide to the users here. ESPDS provides longer term estimates of production costs. There are no special restrictions for cost inputs over time or technologies. The user can get a schedule to project equipment investment requirements, operational costs, and tree harvesting costs as main outputs of the tool.

Sources: ESPDS as excel-based file may be found on the web by CLICKING HERE

Detailed article written by Drs Diniz and Sessions including a numerical example can be downloaded BY CLICKING HERE.

Dr Mohammad Reza Ghaffariyan, University of the Sunshine Coast, mghaffar@usc.edu.au

Road user charge (RUC)

With State and Federal Ministers considering an increase to the Road User Charge for heavy vehicles in the near future it is very important to understand the full effect.

Local fuel prices have continued to climb as last week’s upward movement in international prices filtered through into the Australian market. In addition, the continued impact of the fuel excise reinstatement is being felt at service stations.

When you consider Australian fuel prices over the last quarter, we had the international price peak in mid-June, the fuel excise adjusted upward for CPI in August, to 46 cents along with the removal of the Fuel Tax Credit (FTC). With the reinstatement of the excise and FTC in September, the Road User Charge (RUC) is now being considered for increases by government while we also have significant increases in shipping costs, and a depreciating Australian dollar.

When accounting for any increase in the Road User Charge heavy vehicle road freight is going to experience yet another significant increase to major input costs. Consumers, who now pay the full fuel excise will also experience significant freight cost increases to an all time high as these major input costs have to be passed on for the road freight industry to remain sustainable.

For every increase in the RUC in real terms that means a decrease in your fuel tax credit. For example, if the RUC was increased by 6 cents per litre what that means is a 6 cents per litre decrease in your fuel tax credit.

When you consider in this country we build roads for cars and let trucks use them when can any justification be made that the Road User Charge be increased any more than the indexation increase applied to the Fuel excise.

The continuing review of the Road User Charge over the years still has no transparency being offered about what the charge pays for or what specific priorities for road freight are being delivered on.

Below is a diagram illustrating the effect that with every rise that occurs in the RUC what that really means is a decrease in your fuel tax credit.

This continuing push to increase RUC well above indexation will indisputably eliminate or substantially reduce the FTC for road freight operators and will by necessity, be passed into cost of living increases for consumers.

The QTA along with other representative bodies are advocating hard for your interests on this issue and in the meantime talk to your local Federal MP's to ensure the real effect on you as an operator is understood.

Self-driving trucks hit the road

A self-driving truck will begin trials on Melbourne’s CityLink from today, marking the first time a truck of this kind has been tested on public Australian roads.

Transurban, which owns the CityLink toll road, says trials of the self-driving connected and automated truck will help them to better understand how roads and road technology can be future-proofed to prepare for these sorts of vehicles sharing the road in the future.

Trials with driver assistance have already been conducted, however this time the automated truck will be driving itself.

Breanne Turner is one of three specially trained operators. Photo: Transurban/Herald SunWhile the truck’s automated features will be in

operation, a specially trained safety driver will be on board at all times.

Among the three safety drivers is Breanne Turner, who told the Herald Sun that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“I feel really lucky,” she said to the Melbourne newspaper. “Driving an automated truck removes a lot of the mental burden of driving a normal, non-automated truck.”

Picture: Breanne Turner is one of three specially trained operators.

Photo: Transurban/Herald Sun

Article credit: Big Rigs