New Zealand Forest Products

New Zealand Forest Products (NZFP) was New Zealand's largest industrial company from its creation (following the consolidation of the New Zealand timbermilling sector) in 1936 until the privatisation of state-owned Telecom New Zealand in 1990. Sir David Henry KBE was responsible for negotiations on behalf of the Henry Family that saw the creation of New Zealand Forest Products.

The company continued to expand following World War II and was a large-scale manufacturer of structural timber, board and other packaging products. Following the construction of the Kinleith Mill at Tokoroa in 1953, NZFP became a substantial manufacturer of pulp and paper products. The company owned some 250,000 hectares of forestry plantations, with a further 300,000 hectares under long-term Crown leases from the New Zealand Government.

The company and its tenacious Managing Director were consumed by a long, drawn-out battle to create a vertically integrated forestry and pulp and paper industry based in the North Island. Throughout the 1940s and 50s, he clashed frequently with government agencies designed to limit the licensing of specific industries. He also had to face the hard realities of potential competition from Tasman Pulp and Paper (today, a division of Norwegian forestry major, Norske Skog) which, with A. R. [Pat] Entrican, head of the State Forestry Service and considerable government financial backing, was positioned to take advantage of new international markets in the post-war economy.

Despite this government-backed obstacle, the company developed all of its own infrastructure independently inclusive of company housing, water supply, railway lines, transport networks, and plant machinery. The result of this was that, by the 1960s, New Zealand Forest Products was the largest single manufacturer in New Zealand - producing cardboard, kraft paper, wrappings, and multiwall bags, to newsprint, fine printing papers, stationery, and specialty papers.

Beyond the fact of being New Zealand's largest private enterprise, New Zealand Forest Products had a profound effect on New Zealand's post-war economy which had verged on economic depression by replacing the once mighty British Empire-developed triumvirate of wool, meat and dairy, with a forestry industry that was focussed on providing product not only to well-established Commonwealth export markets but to then-new emerging New Zealand trade destinations such as Japan and the United States. This marked a significant change in the psyche of post-war New Zealand industry.

By the time of his death, Sir David Henry had put New Zealand on the map in terms of a viable, vertically integrated, forest-based operation. As the company magazine, March of Pine [1951-64], suggested after the opening of the Kinleith processing complex:

...
Wikipedia