KWR Contracting: Tackling ash dieback in North Yorkshire

GRANTHAM-BASED forestry business KWR Contracting has recently seen its harvesting, chipping and mulching teams operating in locations as geographically diverse as Dorset, Cambridgeshire and North Lincolnshire. Founder Kevin Russell has also been working away from his Manor Farm base in both Wales and North Yorkshire.

KWR’s specialised timber harvester, the wheeled Sennebogen 718, has proven itself the ideal workhorse for clearing timber on the road linking the market town of Richmond with the villages higher up in Swaledale. Much of the woodlands are Ministry of Defence training areas and if woodland management in the past has been constrained by military operations, a number of factors have coincided to persuade the authorities to take decisive action.

The most devastating effects of Storm Arwen may have been felt in the more coastal regions, but the high winds and snow blasting in from the north highlighted the risk posed to the public by dense woodland close to the highway. The dominance of ash in many areas flagged up more potential problems. There is no guarantee that ash dieback will finish off all the ashes growing in Swaledale, but there is a distinct possibility that many of the species will not live out their natural span. A higher than normal component of dead stems in the woodland may well have required repeated interventions to remove dangerous trees in the next few years.

Ecologist Stacey Adlard surveys the woodland in advance of the harvesting operation and can mark for retention trees that appear to be important roosts for the various bat species found locally.

Woodfuel is still very much in demand and the value of both woodchips and logs for firewood production will certainly go some considerable way to offsetting the cost of the operation. It was envisaged that all the produce would be able to stay in Yorkshire to satisfy demand in areas where woodland cover is more sparse. The military has always been a major economic driver in North Yorkshire and close cooperation between the MOD, as a major landowner, and the highway authority, has allowed for a very efficient roadside timber clearance operation.

A road closure order sees a diversionary route in operation taking general traffic away from the waters of the River Swale between 7am and 6pm on weekdays. Out of the dale, the smaller roads edge onto the moorland and travellers will need to allow extra time for their journeys. The North Yorkshire Council website is able to inform residents of the average and current delays the extended itinerary will require. Nevertheless, good communication between the partners ensured the KWR team was able quickly to report the road had been cleared and operations stopped to allow the passage of an ambulance on emergency duties from Richmond’s Ambulance Station. It came through with lights flashing and klaxons howling. 

READ MORE: Ufkes Greentec: How the Dutch firm brought chippers, stump grinders, grabs and tree shears to the UK

The brief is to clear most of the woody vegetation for 25 m either side of the edge of the carriageway. Kevin Russell, in the cab of the Sennebogen 718, directs the Vosch grapple saw to remove upper limbs of the trees within range or to fell trees at the base. Smaller material is stacked in piles on one side of the road, ready for chipping, and larger material destined to be dealt with by firewood processing machinery on the other. Trees out of range that are due for removal are felled with the chainsaw towards the road.

Dismantling a tree at height allows the cut sections to be bunched below before being swung across the road onto the chip pile in a single lift. Felling from the base into the woodland not only risks damaging the trees marked to remain but leaving broken tops and branches out of reach of the grapple saw.

Most can then be handled by the Sennebogen’s grapple saw, although a few require winching to within range of the machine’s loader. 

The sharp end of the 718’s harvesting capability is the Vosch grapple saw. Designed by Dutch machinery manufacturer Van Osch Construction and Forestry BV, based now just across the German border in the town of Emmerich, the format of the head has been developed to prioritise weight reduction. The objective was to optimise performance parameters when working at height in pruning operations. There was no compromise, however, in the development of the attachment’s rotating system. While accurate manipulation of the grapple saw was essential when working in and around the crowns, it has also delivered benefits when handling and reducing the hardwood trees being removed in KWR’s North Yorkshire contract.

Sennebogen has been producing lifting and handling equipment in Southern Germany for 70 years. Lifting capacity up to 300 tonnes is available from the firm’s crawler and duty cycle cranes, and bespoke heavy lifting equipment for dockside use remains one of Sennebogen’s speciality services. Development of the four-wheeled Mobile 723/730/735, with all-wheel steering and powerful boom configuration, saw Sennebogen machines at work in woodyards and smaller sawmills throughout central Europe, equally adept at unloading timber trucks and supplying the sawmill infeed. 

The Sennebogen 718 teases an ash tree out from behind a substantial birch. With the grapple saw at maximum extension it is the slew cylinders that need to provide the power to loosen the crown and edge the stem around into position for processing. As a specialist machine developed from the Sennebogen Mobile range, the 718 was designed with an oversized slew ring to increase the slewing power.

The Sennebogen 718 has been developed from the smallest of the Mobile range and is now fulfilling an extremely specialised role in the German manufacturer’s fleet. The quick interchange of attachments makes the 718 a multifunctional carrier; being rapidly converted, for example, to load woodchips or round timber. Reduced weight expands the four-wheeler’s operating envelope to include many tree-harvesting and pruning operations.

The newly developed crane, the K13T, has further reduced the weight of the 718 to 21.4 tonnes while increasing reach to 13 m. An inner boom of 6.5 m and an outer boom of 4.2 m – with a 2.05 m extension – have given the crane an operating action suitable for efficient timber harvesting at the stump with one of the smaller harvesting heads. At full extension it features a lifting moment of 1.7 Nm.  

Not all the trees – or even all the ashes – in the 25 m zones are due for removal. Stacey Adlard, the site ecologist from Barret Environmental, can spare those specimens suspected to be important bat roosts or to provide bird-nesting sites. In some cases it is deemed that crown removal by the Sennebogen is necessary to reduce the risk of branches falling from height, but for the benefit of the woodland fauna the bole of the tree itself should remain. Clearance of most of the ash trees and the dense understory may well, according to the scientists, reduce ash foliage litter and restrict the spread of the ash dieback fungus. It will certainly ease the work of North Yorkshire’s highway engineers.

Alec Pearson, KWR’s contracts manager, coordinates the operations as well as felling most of the out-of-range timber with his Stihl MS500i chainsaw. Two of the team’s newer members take charge of chip production and transport. The family of Jack Down farm in Lincolnshire and their enterprise has moved largely to anaerobic digestion of arable crops for energy production. While there was always a place for Jack on the farm, operating machinery throughout the UK held its attractions. With his experience of agricultural machinery operation, he fits in well with the KWR team. On site, Jack is aboard the Fendt 939 Vario tractor operating the Ufkes Greentec chipper and Epsilon M70 loader.

Contracts manager Alec Pearson is on the ground to coordinate operations and ensure that work progresses steadily along the length of the contract site.

For efficient operation of the chipper and loader, the 330 hp net output of the Fendt’s Deutz engine is used fairly continuously, while the 25 m³ capacity tipping chip bin is filling.  Colleague Mitchell Cox can then draw alongside in the JCB Fastrac and 50 m³ chip trailer and accept the material from the Greentec’s tipping hopper. The chipper outfeed chute can then be directed to continue filling the bigger trailer. 

Mitchell Cox of Melton Mowbray trained in his family’s plumbing business before helping a local farmer out at harvest time. He found the work so enjoyable he approached Kevin Russell and soon found himself learning new skills on KWR’s fleet of machinery. On the North Yorkshire contract, his main role is to transport the chips to the operation’s central chip and log landing.

While Jack continues to fill the big trailer, Mitchell often climbs aboard the Manitou telehandler and sweeps the carriageway surface where harvesting and chipping operations have been completed. Alec Pearson explained that all the operatives on site have their dedicated role but everyone is trained to operate the wide range of machinery in the KWR fleet. 

East Midlands-based KWR Contracting have won the contract to manage roadside woodlands in North Yorkshire’s Swaledale.

While Kevin Russell leads the way in the Sennebogen 718, felling, cross-cutting and stacking produce, he is able to take full advantage of many of the features the Sennebogen engineers incorporated in the development of a machine that is a truly efficient all-rounder for biomass contractors. Fuelwood harvesting for chipwood production was a relatively new sector for the German company and they could incorporate modifications specifically targeted to enhance the main tasks the new machine was expected to perform.

Perfect control of the slewing of the upper section was of paramount importance for pruning and crown-dismantling operations. The provision of an increased-diameter slewing ring would add both precision and power to the attachment at the end of the crane; the only cost being a slight decrease in slewing speed. The hydraulically elevating E270 Maxcab gives the operator a very precise perspective of the work in hand, whether that be removing sections at height or selecting cutting positions to segregate chipping wood from log material.

Kevin Russell knew that, given the right conditions, the Sennebogen 718 would prove itself to be the ideal machine for woodfuel harvesting and processing. Production is substantial and damage to the woodland floor and remaining trees is minimal.

Few of the roads running alongside the rivers in the Yorkshire Dales cut along level ground. For most there is an ‘upside’ and a ‘downside’. Mechanised harvesting on the rising slope presents few problems, but operators at fixed height in their cabs are often totally blinded from the bases of the trees where the ground drops away from the road.

The elevating cab system proves its true value when harvesting on the latter. Kevin Russell can his keep tyres on the tarmac, extend his cab over the verge and then guide the Vosch grapple saw to a good proportion of the stems due for removal. Alec Pearson will climb down later with his Stihl MS500i, hi-lift wedge and hammer to deal with the rest.