Opinion

Six things to help fix the building timber shortage

Pattrick Smellie
Fri, 02 Apr 2021

No sooner did New Zealand start building a lot more houses – the ultimate fix for home unaffordability – than we started to run short of wood.It’s so New Zealand-y, it makes you want to weep. A country apparently full of pine trees but a shortage of timber. How could that possibly have happened?The short, easy story is that NZ ships too many unprocessed logs to China and other markets with low-cost labour and we short-change ourselves in the process.If only it were so simple.A book – perhaps not a very interesting book &...

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Six things to help fix the building timber shortage

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