As one of the few independent saw millers left in New Zealand Ray Carter is part of an endangered breed.

'I can't see anyone else in my family wanting to take the mill on when I retire. We have six daughters but none of them nor their partners are interested,” says Ray, who with wife Lyn operates Ray Carter's Sawmill in Wairoa Rd near Tauranga.

Last of the line – independent sawmiller Ray Carter with the sawmill which was originally from the Whakatane Board Mills.

It was Ray's grandfather John who founded J A Carter Sawmill Co in the late 1940s and Ray's father Jock, one of three sons, eventually took it over.
The Carter family moved to the land on the banks of the Wairoa River in 1940, leasing to buy 186 acres for milking cows. The mill was set up initially to process timber of John Carter's home, the house where Ray was to later grow up.
Jock Carter, thanks to the encouragement of former Tauranga mayor and entrepreneur Bob Owens, was among the first five timber mills to export pine to Japan between 1957 and 1963. By the 1970s the timber mill had grown to a staff of 15, buying in logs from Kaingaroa Forest to mill for clients,
including building companies such as Goodwin Homes.
Ray reckons he, his grandfather and father all had ‘sawdust for brains'. His love of timber and milling was fostered as he helped out while at school. 'My dad wouldn't let me go straight to working at the mill but said I had to get a trade so I trained as a fitter welder and then went to Canada but by 1976 I was back home working in the mill.
'I just love working with timber. It's clean and it's warm. When I was a fitter welder my hands were always black and you were breathing in fumes. Steel is cold, hard and dirty.”
As well as milling logs, Carters produced what they brand named Valencia timber tray for export kiwifruit. 'The cardboard trays came along and that was the end of that.”
There was a time when Ray and Jock bought in logs by the truck load, processed them and sold the timber. 'We were so involved in what we were doing, we didn't realise the market was changing to big stores where people went on a Saturday with mum and the kids to buy timber, nails, paint, the works.”
Independent saw mills were being bought and shut down by the big companies, too, so Carters Sawmill changed tact.
'We now mill other people's logs and process pallets of timber for a company making trellises.”
For Ray there's a sense of anticipation when he lines up a log on the sawmill which was originally from the Whakatane Board Mills. 'You never quite know how the timber is going to look – what the grain is going to be like.”
Timber milled by Ray is air-cured, meaning it dried naturally, reducing the risk of wrapping. Radiata pine is what the mill handles most and because of Ray's skills and range of equipment, it is able to produce timber to order, including weather boards and skirtings in specific profiles.
Ray now might be the only staff member at the mill but it still has the space, equipment and maintenance facilities it did in its heyday.
From a thriving, busy mill employing 15 staff, Carters is now a one-man band but Ray is happy with the down-scaling as it means he has the time and machinery to turn logs into the timber products clients want.