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About Us

Pine. Its sap and sawdust practically runs in our blood. Pinepac is a family business, established six decades and three generations ago in 1943. We've come a long way since those early days when felling was done with hand cross-cut saws and axes. It was my father, Neil, his father Andrew and their mate Tim O'Leary who started the company and the first sawmill in the area to produce sawn timber rather than firewood.

In the 1950's and 60's the sawmill cut kauri for boatbuilding, becoming skilled in cutting single planks of 40 feet or more long. As the sawmilling business developed, Pinepac brought in bulldozers and other machinery to take logs from the bush. With that came the ability to form roads and so began our significant contribution to developing access roads and parks throughout the northwest region.

In 1972 my father died suddenly and as a fresh-faced 23 year old I took over the family business with my younger brother Wayne coming on board afterwards. A few years later we decided to let go of earthmoving and focus on sawmilling.

In 1980 we built our first high temperature kiln, heated by steam from a wood fuel boiler. Timber that took weeks to air dry could now be dried in 24 hours at over 110 degrees centigrade.

We then began exporting this timber, initially to Singapore and later to the Pacific Islands and Australia.

In our commitment to conserving and managing pine, we began to acquire land for planting in 1989 and now have nearly 2,000 acres of pine plantation and a solid replanting policy. With the help of our 150 staff, Pinepac now plants, grows, harvests, processes and manufactures pine - approximately 32,000m3, of sawn timber each year. It's what we know and we do it well.

As it turns out, pine really is in our blood. I, great grandson of a Norwegian immigrant in 1880, recently discovered something interesting in the place of our ancestors in Norway - in the tiny village of Amli, among the very roots of the 'Andersen' family tree - a sawmill.

- Bruce Anderson, Managing Director