Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 highlighted concerns around the impact of slash on waterways – especially around New Zealand’s East Coast. In November 2024, global forestry company Rayonier authorised the design and build of a large-scale grapple to help with the tidy-up. Blain Cox and his Hawke’s Bay-based crew, Cox Forestry Services, agreed to give it a test run.
The six-man swing-yarder crew uses an EMS Tether Winch machine, a John Deere 859 Feller Buncher and a tetherable John Deere 909KH with a Waratah 625C Processor. They are cut-to-length harvesting specialists with a long history together.
The trial of the grapple worked extremely well and, to test it further, they used it to clean out a nearby creek.
The efficiency of the grapple got Blain thinking: Why not use something similar to pull wood? He says he was at a time in his career when he wanted to challenge himself, and he was determined to try something different. The idea sat with him for around 12 months which he spent looking at the nearby terrain, trying to decide how and where he could make the idea work – where he could fly out cut-to-length logs.
It required suitable ground where there were potential plateaux, where the processor could be set, timber could be brought down and chopped up and the grapple fed. He put his idea to LumberLIFT in Rotorua. They talked through the project’s challenges and went away to do some design work. LumberLIFT produced 3D animated drawings of the grapple holding a scaled-to-size log.
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