The Irish Government’s Climate Action Plan 2030, coming hot on the heels of plans to turn the UK into a climate neutral economy by 2050, contains targets and recommendations that hold out great prospects for the forestry and the timber harvesting sector.
As news bulletins show, pressure for change has been building up on all sides – by protesters focusing awareness on the need for climate action and by increased public awareness of the importance of plant and animal life, including sea pollution, plastics use and the damaging impact that emissions are having on air quality generally. Patently, both plans are a response to that pressure.
Change is coming, and not just in a switch to electric-powered vehicles. In the scramble, forestry will have a major contribution to make. Knowing that trees absorb much of the substances that are causing environmental havoc, and mindful that Ireland has considerable land area on which trees could be planted and prosper, it is inevitable that forestation will have a big part to play in our future.
For people engaged in the sector, the opportunities will be significant. For the owners of poor land of little use for farming purposes, forestry presents an alternative income source. For those seeking employment, it would be surprising if an abundance of new career opportunities did not present – in forestry itself and in spin-off services and industries engaged in timber processing and end-use applications. For machinery distributors, McHale Plant Sales – whose primary focus is the supply and marketing of timber harvesting machinery – opportunity and growth ought to be the buzzwords of the future.
As distributors of Komatsu construction equipment in the form of excavators and ancillary lines, of Komatsu Forest timber harvesting and forwarding machinery, and of Terex Ecotec equipment, McHale Plant Sales is perfectly positioned to go with this growth and, to that end, is investing in employee training, field support, facilities management and structural alignment that will be required to handle this growth.
In this, the company expects to be a pro-active and influential force on the machinery and equipment side, prepared to work closely with equipment manufacturers, fellow suppliers, Coillte, Teagasc and others within the sector to ensure that Ireland is fit and ready to provide the support environmentalists and the public generally will expect us to give. In that respect, forestry is a subject that has moved to the top of our corporate agenda, as hopefully it would across our industry generally.
