Wood processors have disputed the central claim behind the Government’s NZ$60 million Golden Bay Cement rescue, citing the homes, schools, and health facilities already built in wood as proof that practical cement substitutes exist. That is according to the Wood Processors and Manufacturers Association of New Zealand (WPMA), which issued its rebuttal on Thursday, three days after Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis tied the grant to cement made at Whangārei until at least 2040.
“Cement has no practical substitutes,” Willis said in Monday’s release, naming homes, hospitals, schools, roads, and other major infrastructure as the reason New Zealand cannot lose its only fully integrated cement plant. Ministers acted on advice that Fletcher Building was considering closing the Whangārei clinker line in favour of a cheaper import-only model, with the grant tied to at least $150 million of the company’s own money and cement made on site until 31 December 2040.
“Timber and wood products are already a proven and practical substitute,” the association said of the very buildings Willis listed, with cross-laminated timber, glulam, and laminated veneer lumber holding up homes, schools, health facilities, and offices across New Zealand. Faster build times, lower embodied carbon, lighter buildings, and strong seismic performance carry the case, alongside the processing jobs that those products keep in the regions.
Crews have craned that evidence into place at Parliament’s Museum Street site, set to become the country’s largest mass timber structure and built to the highest seismic design level. Domestic suppliers carry the frame, with Red Stag TimberLab providing glulam and cross-laminated timber, and Nelson Pine providing laminated veneer lumber.
More than 38,000 jobs are connected directly to wood processing and manufacturing across New Zealand, mostly in the regions, according to WPMA chief executive Mark Ross, whose members export $3.2 billion in value-added wood products and sell $2 billion more at home each year. Ross put the sector’s case to every party in an April manifesto backing a national shift from raw log exports to high-value manufacturing, with up to 60 per cent of the harvest still leaving the country as raw logs before the 7 November poll.
“The challenge is the emissions costs,” Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop told Newstalk ZB, describing a payment no government wants to make for a corporation. A financial assessment commissioned before the negotiations found that carbon charges were the binding constraint on onshore cement production, and Willis ruled out relief that would have weakened the Emissions Trading Scheme.
It comes as the Government declined to back a rescue of Juken New Zealand’s Northland Mill days before the cement deal, with the Kaitāia veneer plant closing on 21 August and 60 jobs lost. Acting Prime Minister David Seymour turned down a council-backed plan for upgraded timber processing beside a woody biomass fuel plant, in what the Workers First Union counts as the seventh wood processing closure this term.
The Government is backing the substitute elsewhere, with Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay committing $3.2 million to an $8 million study into making fully fitted mass timber modules onshore, work his June announcement claims would leave every log worth 6.7 times more. Timber already carries nearly 90 per cent of New Zealand’s wall framing, according to BRANZ’s New Dwellings Survey figures for the decade to 2019, while the Whangārei grant keeps more than 150 direct cement jobs until at least 2040.
