2024 marks 40 years in business for iconic Taranaki timber company Taranakipine. From one man’s dream to a global export business, Taranakipine has evolved considerably over the years and, like their products, shown remarkable resilience in the process.
Rodney Jones started Taranaki Sawmills Limited in 1984 when he saw an opportunity.
Then-Prime Minister Robert Muldoon was encouraging New Zealand to Think Big, and with a background in forestry, Rodney knew there were a whole lot of trees in the Te Wera forest that were about to reach maturity.
Rodney had been involved in sawmilling since the 1950s, when he’d developed Tongariro Timber cutting native timber from State Forest 42 at National Park. A modern thinker, his was the first mill in the country to have concrete floors instead of dirt floors.
He also installed New Zealand’s first bandsaw, and despite some suppliers doubting the capability of this flash new tool, ran a successful operation for almost 30 years.
By the time Rodney was inspired by the idea of sawmilling at Te Wera, the forestry industry had shifted away from milling indigenous forests towards milling plantation forests, in particular Radiata pine.
Rodney believed Taranaki needed its own sawmill to take the Te Wera forest crop and process it. He had the connections and expertise to know how to develop the market and was excited by the prospect of providing employment to local people in Taranaki.
Early days
Rodney’s three sons, Mark, Stuart and Roger, were all involved in the establishment of Taranaki Sawmills Limited. They’ve also been major influences over the lifetime of the business – but more on that later.
With a background in construction, Roger was initially involved in establishing the site at Bell Block. His first task was to run power across the site, but apart from helping to deliver the occasional truckload to Wellington and the like, he stayed out of the timber processing side of things.
That was more Mark’s and Rodney’s responsibility, and together they got the business on its feet.
The initial site was on a relatively small footprint by the standards of the time (and certainly today), with a mill, sorting table, a planing mill and a high temperature kiln fuelled by an adjacent furnace.
The concept was fairly simple. They cut local logs, processed them and supplied them as framing and finishing product lines to local builders.
Rodney and Mark had been careful to get their ducks in a row first – from hiring the right people to run the processing plant, to establishing the market for the products they made and getting support from the bank.
Rodney and Mark leveraged the relationships they had, and grew new ones. This was well before emails and online calls – the important conversations were always had face to face.
They grew steadily from that base, expanding and making more products for more markets. A key focus was on getting the basics right – knowing who the clients were, getting their prices right, ensuring they had quality products and delivering them on time.
In that respect, it’s very similar to Taranakipine today.
Innovating
Around 10 years after it started, Taranaki Sawmills began exporting products overseas. It started with Australia, and in the years since has expanded to the United States and Europe.
Australia remains its biggest export market today, and Taranakipine products can be found in all of the 300+ Bunnings stores across the country. Around 70% of the products it makes are exported.
Shortly after exports began, the business made a significant technological breakthrough that helped to set up its success ever since.
It’s called finger jointing, and it’s a clever way of removing defects like knots from lengths of timber and the products Taranakipine makes from them.
Automated chopping technology receives 5-6 metre lengths of timber, cuts them into blocks of around 40 centimetres long, takes out the imperfections and “finger joints” it back together in up to 7 metre lengths.
“It takes out the lower quality features and engineers the timber into a much stronger and straighter product,” says Taranakipine CEO Tom Boon.
“Finished products are finger jointed, laminated and primed with a first coat of paint.
“Key product lines are laminated posts, beams, rafters, weatherboards and the like. These products are the core of our business – we’ve taken the simple processing element of what we do and turned it into a value-add proposition with wood products that are the highest quality and ready to be used.”
A Taranaki business
The business was 100% owned and operated by the Jones family up until the late 1990s. At that point, Demi Holdings came in as a major shareholder.
Demi Holdings is led by Tur Borren, an Auckland businessman also known for winning a gold medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics with the New Zealand men’s hockey team.
“His involvement opened our eyes to how good it could be to have another shareholder involved,” says Roger Jones. Roger had become a director of the business by that point, and he remains one today.
Roger’s brother Mark and Brian Benton had been co-CEOs prior to that, and Demi Holdings brought in its own CEO, Don Herbert.
“Don came in for a year and stayed for seven,” Roger explains.
Herbert helped to grow the business considerably until he was replaced as CEO by Tom Boon in 2007, who also bought into the business as a shareholder. One of the early things Tom did was lead a rebrand to realign the name of the business with what it was doing.
“We weren’t a traditional sawmill at that point – the sawmill was one of 10 different manufacturing departments. We wanted to de-emphasise the sawmilling and have a company name that represented who we are rather than a manufacturing process.”
They considered a range of new options for the business’ name, but they never entertained the thought of removing ‘Taranaki.’
“I’m so pleased we didn’t,” Tom says. “When we look at our export markets, particularly Australia, many of our customers there just know us as ‘Taranaki’, and that’s it. Some of them had been with us for 20-odd years at the time – they didn’t necessarily know Taranaki as a region but that’s what we were to them.”
Taranakipine was settled upon as a name that better encapsulated the entire business.
Resilience
The Global Financial Crisis that started in 2008 was a huge shock for international economies, particularly housing and construction.
Tom Boon had replaced Herbert on April Fool’s Day 2007 (a fact not lost on the former), and in December of that year he signed off on a large capital expenditure project to modernise and expand its value-add operations.
They doubled the size of the finger jointing operation utilising automation technology that increased production speed with reduced staffing.
A month later, the GFC sent markets into freefall.
“We’d signed off on the biggest capex in the modern history of the company, and the markets crashed,” Tom summarises.
“New Zealand went from building 40,000 homes per year two years prior to 14,000 that year. At the same time, China started buying New Zealand Radiata pine logs, which brought serious competition from a cost perspective.”
While the large amount of borrowing presented a big risk in the midst of the GFC, it turned out to be a big factor in surviving that period.
“We’d dropped our costs so much that it allows us to keep our heads above water during this challenging period,” Tom says.
Taranakipine today
Taranakipine is known in its key markets for high quality finished timber products. It’s moved away from commodity-priced timber framing and, with the help of further investment and expansion, runs a highly efficient, automated processing line in laminated timber products.
In its processes nothing is wasted, with wood residues used to heat the timber drying kilns, knotty offcut blocks sold for firewood, bark used for garden bark products and wood shavings used for bedding across many Taranaki chicken farms.
In 2019 Taranakipine started a new venture, Woodspan PLT panels.
Woodspan produces sustainable, fully finished mass timber panels that are made to order and delivered to building sites, ready for installation as floors or roofs, without requiring large construction crews.
Woodspan has now completed over 400 houses across New Zealand.
In total, there are just under 200 Taranakipine staff.
Rodney Jones wasn’t afraid to think big when he started the business, but even he may have struggled to conceive of what it would become.
Roger Jones and Tom Boon are both adamant the strength of the business is its people. Around 40% of the staff have been there for more than 10 years, and one – John Sanders – was there on day one, 40 years ago.
“There’s a lot of know-how to make all this work,” Roger says. “Our people have incredible expertise, and they’re also good at transferring that knowledge to others.”
“Being in Taranaki for 40 years is a huge milestone and it deserves to be celebrated,” Tom adds.
“Our industry has its ups and downs, and we’ve changed a lot in 40 years, but people have always been at the heart of it, and that’s what we want to recognise.”