Page 86 - Build 151

Departments/Innovation By Dael Climo, Build Deputy Editor
Product a hit
New Zealand could emulate Scandinavia and create a rst-world economy on the back of value-added timber products. That’s the dream of one entrepreneur who has banked on a product that helps.
Nigel Sharplin (left) at a logging site with contractor Jason Brook.
NIGEL SHARPLIN is one of New Zealand’s fast-rising high-tech designers. He has produced Navman accessories, world- rst wheel- chair remotes, parking meter systems, chip-card devices and now a range of tools to nd out which pine trees are best for building construction.
Delivering high-tech products
After a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Canterbury, Sharplin joined Fisher & Paykel working on the groundbreaking Smart Drive washing machine. This, he says, taught him the philosophy and values that drive the approach of inFact, the technology development company he founded. Events moved quickly after that.
‘After I set up inFact, I was invited to meet Industrial Research Limited and the Carter Holt Harvey (CHH) subsidiary Fibre-gen to help productionise the Hitman HM200 timber-testing product,’ he says.
‘Fibre-gen asked us to develop the Hitman ST300 tool, and we ended up taking a 20% stake in the business. When Graham Hart bought CHH, management sold Fibre-gen to inFact and Peter Carter.’
Sharplin says that a thinking approach to the creation of game- changing innovative new products customers want will help build a strong rst-world economy.
Automatic tree measuring
Sharplin and fellow director Peter Carter have secured 27 patent registrations for the use of acoustics in the grading of green wood involving their Hitman HM200 and ST300 hand tools.
The Hitman PH330 product, their latest invention, measures the strength of felled trees automatically while they are being harvested and sends them to the right mill for processing. According to Scion, it will create an estimated $200 million of new value for the forestry sector in New Zealand.
The Hitman PH330’s development comes as knowledge grows about the bene ts of constructing high-rise buildings using engineered wood products (EWP) such as laminated veneer lumber and cross-laminated timber panels. Both are manufactured in New Zealand.
‘A 7-storey timber structure survived the equivalent of nine Kobe earthquakes on a Japanese earthquake simulator platform with no discernible damage,’ Sharplin says.
‘Wood is the ultimate resilient and renewable resource for construction.’
The Hitman range enables forest owners to segregate the timber for wood processors. ‘We must, however, make decisions at the point of harvest based on the value of the timber and not just the commodity-based volume of it.’
84 — December 2015/January 2016 — Build 151