Top Spot
Last year saw the changing of the guard in Top Spot, as the trophies for the leading harvesting and thinning crews in 2018 swapped islands.
In a closely-fought contest, the trophy for the Harvesting Top Crew headed to the bottom of the South Island to now reside with Blue Wood Thinning, a Southland-based clear-fell crew, while the trophy for the Waste Thinning Top Crew crossed the Cook Strait to the North Island for the first time to go to Inta-Wood Forestry in the Bay of Plenty.
To illustrate the closeness of the competition, the difference between first and second in both harvesting and thinning-to-waste ended up being less than 1% after a full year of close combat.
Putting this into perspective, it’s about the same as the margin between first and second place in the 100m final at the Rio Olympics in 2016!
We looked very hard at the arguments for size of crew, where crews were working and cable versus ground based. The reality is, regardless of the size and type of operation, unless the crew is humming in terms of leadership, culture and ‘doing’, they won’t win.
In fact, if a smaller crew doesn’t quite get things right, the impact on the overall result can be greater than that of a larger crew....
