Pan Pac Forest Products Ltd facts for kids
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| Industry | Forestry, timber products |
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| Founded | 1971 |
| Headquarters | Whirinaki, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand |
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Key people
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Tony Clifford, managing director |
| Owner | Oji Holdings |
Pan Pac Forest Products Ltd is a company that makes things from trees. It's located in Whirinaki, Hawke's Bay, close to Napier, New Zealand. Pan Pac grows trees, makes products like wood pulp (used for paper) and timber (wood for building), and then sells them. About 360 people work for the company. Pan Pac started with a New Zealand owner but is now fully owned by a Japanese company. They make a special type of wood pulp called thermo-mechanical pulp.
Contents
About Pan Pac: A Forest Products Company
Pan Pac was started in 1971. It was created by a New Zealand family business called Carter Consolidated Ltd. This company, which later became Carter Holt Harvey, had been around since 1896.
In the 1960s, Carter Consolidated was looking for ways to use the leftover wood from their tree farms and sawmills. They found out that Japan really needed a type of wood pulp. So, they decided to explore making it for export. To make enough pulp, they realised they would need more wood than their own waste could provide. This meant they needed to get rights to cut down trees from a large forest. They would also need a sawmill to process the wood.
In 1969, the New Zealand government offered a huge amount of timber from the Kaingaroa Forest for sale. Carter Consolidated bid for it and won the rights to cut 220 million cubic feet of timber. The rest went to another company, Tasman Pulp and Paper.
How Pan Pac Was Formed
On May 3, 1971, Carter Consolidated Ltd teamed up with two Japanese companies: Oji Paper Company and Kokusaku Pulp. They signed an agreement to create a new company called Carter Oji Kokusaku Pan Pacific Ltd.
Pan Pac started as a joint venture, meaning it was owned by more than one company. Carter Consolidated owned 60% of the company, and the two Japanese partners owned 40%.
Over time, Carter Holt Harvey (the New Zealand owner) sold off their shares. By 1993, Pan Pac became fully owned by Japanese companies. Oji Paper Company owned 87%, and Nippon Paper Industries Company Ltd owned 13%. In 2007, Oji Paper Company (now Oji Holdings) bought all the remaining shares, making Pan Pac 100% Oji owned.
The Pan Pac Mill: Where Products Are Made
The Pan Pac mill was built in the Hawke's Bay region. This location was chosen because Napier was the closest port to the large Kaingaroa Forest. Whirinaki, where the mill is, had a good water supply from the Esk River. It was also easy to get raw materials (trees) to the mill and send out the finished products.
The mill was built very quickly, in just 18 months, and cost $12 million. It was finished in March 1973 and officially opened by Prime Minister Norman Kirk in June of that year. When it first opened, the pulp mill could make 400 tonnes of dried pulp every day.
Expanding the Mill
Between 1974 and 1976, the mill was expanded in a second stage of development, costing another $12 million. This added new equipment to process wood chips, more refining machines, and systems to dry and package the pulp. These changes helped the mill produce more, reaching 600–700 tonnes of dried pulp per day.
In the early 1980s, the company needed to change the type of pulp it made because of market demand. From 1981 to 1982, the mill was updated to produce thermo-mechanical pulp instead of mechanical pulp. This cost $30 million and involved adding new refiners and chip processing equipment.
More updates happened later, including a large boiler in 2002 and a new chipmill in 2009. Today, the pulpmill and sawmill at the site are supported by a chipmill, two boilers, and a power plant that generates electricity.
What Pan Pac Produces Annually
Pan Pac makes a lot of products each year.
- They produce about 220,000 tonnes of wood pulp. This pulp is sent to Japan to be used in making paper.
- They also produce around 200,000 cubic metres of timber (wood for building).
Cyclone Gabrielle's Impact
On February 14, 2023, the Pan Pac site was severely affected by Cyclone Gabrielle. Around 4:30 to 5:00 AM, floodwaters from the Esk Valley rushed into Whirinaki. Tony Clifford, the managing director, said that it would take many months for the site to recover from the damage.
