Couple world traders

Press, 10 July 1985, Page 31

Couple world traders

By I

NEILL BIRSS

The New Zealand forestry industry may still be paying the price for not taking the chance offered it by a Christchurch man in the mid-19705. The refusal by New Zealand firms to supply Mr Peter Hyam with the timber he sought led to

Chile’s taking a toehold in the Japanese market. Mr Hyam, now running a successful international timber merchant exporting business with his wife, Jean, was trading in farm timber in 1975. That year, the Mayor of Christchurch, Sir Hamish Hay, and Mr Cyril

Smith, of H. W. Smith, Ltd, asked Mr Hyam if he could obtain timber for a person in Christchurch’s sister city, Kurashiki. “One of the problems was that the Japanese were already buying logs in New Zealand, and were making as much money in the shipping as on the logs,” Mr Hyam recalls. Mr Hyam pressed ahead with the object of obtaining logs for the man in Christchurch’s sister city. New Zealand’s forest firms, however, would not sell to him. The Christchurch man went as far as calling on the then Minister of Overseas Trade, Mr Talboys, for help. “He said he couldn’t force forestry firms to sell to me,” Mr Hyam says. - The New Zealand firms would have made $lOO,OOO more per ship load if they had taken the Hyam offer. Stumped, as it were, in New Zealand, Mr Hyam was told by a friend, Mr Vernon Wood, of Nelson, a logging contractor and practical forester, that there was plenty of radiata pine, and a suitable port, in Chile. “I said to the Japanese, ‘How about Chile?’ They didn’t like it; this was a bit different. But it could be the same wood, radiata pine.” Soon Mr Hyam was on a plane to Japan while Mr Wood was on his way to Chile. Within days, the two New Zealanders had set up a deal between Chile and Japan. The merchant in the sister city backed out. Instead the sale was made to a Tokyo firm. In Chile, the contract was arranged a block away from the offices of Mitsubishi. “You’ll never do it,” was the response when Mr Hyam asked at Christchurch shipping offices for quotations for the charter of a ship. But with Hong Kong finance he did charter a ship, and through a New Zealand company. The Japanese sent a Government delegation to Chile to see the ship load. The Japanese soon took over the Chile-Japan timber trade, and Mr Hyam moved to new fields. The Hyams have tiny overheads. They work from their Burnside home. No telex (“you put one in and you would find yourself getting up in the middle of the night to find what it was chattering out”) — they use

a bureau. No expensive equipment, just a 32K Commodore PET computer they have had for five years, and for which Mr Hyam has written the programs. The two, with no employees, travel the' world setting up deals in timber. The Hyams opened a market for rimu panelling in the Hamburg-Bremen region of West Germany. New Zealand’s production would make up about 0.1 per cent of the market for high-class panelling in the region, he says. They were followed into the market by other New Zealand exporters, competing with each other and selling down the price of rimu. From being a premier wood compared with teak,

rimu fell to being compared with hem-fir, from North America, Mr Hyam says. “Rimu is absolutely beautiful,” he says, and is appalled that it is wasted in house framing. Now the main trade of the Hyams is semi-manufac-tured wood components and turning squares for foreign furniture manufacturers. The Hyams do not limit themselves to New Zealand timber. On his visit to Chile, Mr Hyam travelled on to Bolivia, and was able to negotiate a deal in Bolivian wood to the United States. He has sold Chilean pine to Europe as well as to Japan. The Hyams have been able to increase the “internationalism” of their Burnside home business through the offices of the United Nations. After setting up the first Chilean contract, Mr Hyam accepted an invitation to become an adviser to the International Trade Centre, based in Geneva. This agency is run by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the secretariat of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (G.A.T.T.). He has been on assignments to Chile, Paraguay, and the West Indies (including Barbados, Guyana, Dominica, and Belize). In the field he works with locals helping establish the

resources and buying response to products. The experience and contacts are invaluable to an international trader, and Mr Hyam commends such consultancy work to other New Zealanders, whatever their product. Advisers from this country will often be acceptable to a country when advisers from bigger countries are not, he has found. A Londoner, who is graduated from Bangor University, Wales, with a degree of forestry before coming to New Zealand, Mr Hyam was pleased to proclaim himself a New Zealander when his consultancy work took him to the border of Argentina and Paraguay during the Falklands conflict. The travel provides binsights into world forestry. For example, Mr Hyam feels New Zealand cannot afford to be smug about all the pine that will be millable in the 19905. Although the world’s tropical forests are shrinking, hardwood forests have been increasing in North America and some other countries. This means that there will be more oak to compete with our pine exports. In softwoods, there are always the vast forests of the Soviet Union, which can unpredictably push big amounts of timber on the markets when it needs overseas currency. The competition from Chilean radiata pine is hotting up, too. In 1975, oxen were still dragging logs to the mills in Chile. Now the Chileans are installing sophisticated equipment such as laser-guided saws, and their waterfront is becoming highly efficient, regularly setting productivity records. How did the Hyams develop their home industry? Mr Hyam had a suitable background: a professional forester, later a manager for the Scott group. Then came the dealing in farm logs, and the sister-city trade inquiry. Mrs Jean Hyam, a liaison officer with the Institute of Management for six years, came into the business gradually, at first running its affairs in Christchurch while Mr Hyam travelled.

Now she is an international seller and trader and travels abroad dealing in wood products. Not bad, for a cottage industry.