Towering over the south Waikato village of Atiamuri, the mountain that Knight Logging is harvesting is proving a bit tough. The skyline is about a metre off the ground before any chokers are hooked up to logs and there’s a couple of truckloads of stems to be dragged off this spot and around the hill to the landing.
In a classic case of when the going gets tough, the tough get going, Knight Logging’s owner, Zane Knight is breaking out by himself down the hill when the NZ Logger Iron Test team arrives, while his crew are all in machines processing, loading out… or, in the case of Johnson Peri, shovelling stems to his boss while tethered to the new Ecoforst T-WINCH 30.2 which is up above in the standing trees.
The T-WINCH is sold in New Zealand by FORCO and Managing Director and co-owner, Ian Wilton, is enthused about the prospect of the T-WINCH eventually replacing yarders in some crews altogether.
“I think the main point is moving from tethered felling to tethered extraction, which is only productive with fast line speed and big pulling power at the same time,” Ian says.
“The key to this is having a big engine. The T-WINCH 30.2 has a 305 kW or 414HP engine - most 30 tonne excavators have around a 200 kW engine so the 30.2 has around 50% more power than most other large winch machines."
To find out more, get your copy of the October 2023 edition of NZ Logger magazine, on sale from 2 October. Check the link on this page to subscribe to either a printed or digital copy (or both).
