Lumber Recovery and Production Rates of Small-Scale Mobile Sawmilling Industries in Northern Tanzania

Abstract

This study was carried out to quantify technical efficiency of mobile sawmills by determining the lumber recovery rates and production rates of two mobile sawmills namely as Wood-Mizer (band saw machine) and Ding-dong (circular saw machine). The study was conducted in Lushoto district, located in the Northern part of Tanzania. The results indicated that Wood-Mizer had lumber recovery of 51.3% and production rate of 0.64m³/hr., while Ding-dong had lumber recovery rate of 35.2%, and production rate 0.86m3/hr. Generally, results have shown that both sawmills have reasonable lumber recovery rates and production rates irrespective of the differences between the two, however Wood-Mizer had great conversion efficiency compared to the Ding-dong machine. Considering the reduced supply of saw logs for sustainable forest management, a machine with high conversion efficiency is highly encouraged than machine with high speed of production, thus Wood-Mizer stands to have more chances of applications as compared to Ding-dong machine which had relatively higher production rates. However, we encourage further studies to be conducted with diverse sets of factors associated with economic aspects as well as tree species to have more baseline information on the performance of these two mobile sawmilling machineries.