Interpine Innovation

08/10/2026

Safer skies through better information ✈️🚁📡

The New Zealand Defence Force's new **HAAST (Hazards, Airspace and Aerodromes Safety Tool)** is a significant step forward for managing operations in New Zealand's low-level airspace.

By providing a shared view of flight intentions, airspace activity, obstacles, and hazards, HAAST helps pilots, drone operators, helicopter crews, and military users better understand who is operating nearby and where potential risks may exist. It also includes automatic conflict detection and hazard reporting to improve situational awareness before take-off.

For industries such as forestry, surveying, infrastructure inspection, agriculture, emergency response, and defence, having access to better airspace information can help reduce risk, improve coordination, and support safer operations for everyone sharing New Zealand's uncontrolled airspace.

It's great to see continued investment in tools that enhance aviation safety and support collaboration between civil and military operators. 👏

26/08/2026

Prioritising airspace safety across all our drone operations.

As a CAA Part 102 certified operator, Interpine.nz uses Flight Advisor NZ across our drone flight operations. This free tool lets us log planned areas and see other manned and unmanned activity in real time — helping deconflict the low-level environment outside controlled airspace.
Shared awareness keeps crews, other aircraft, and the public safer. We encourage every operator, manned or unmanned, to use it for all low-level ops.
flightadvisornz.io
More on coordinating manned & unmanned operations: https://www.aviation.govt.nz/safety/safety-education-and-advice/education/vector-magazine/vector-online/manned-and-unmanned-operations/

All low-level flight operators are reminded to use Flight Advisor to help make sure they’re safe. To improve the safety of low-level flying in uncontrolled airspace, the RNZAF developed Flight Advisor in 2022. This free-to-use computer application is integrated with AirShare and logs the flights o...

20/08/2026

Great to see our innovative approaches leading the way for Department of Conservation, shaping today's natural resources with technology of tomorrow.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Lca7KV5vG/?mibextid=wwXIfr

12/08/2026

🎉 We’re thrilled to announce that our team here at Interpine has been named a finalist in the Innovation & Technology category at the Tompkins Wake Rotorua Business Awards 2026! 🚀

This recognition reflects the passion, innovation, and hard work of our incredible team. Every day, our people are developing and applying cutting-edge technologies across forestry, environmental monitoring, remote sensing, drones, LiDAR, AI, and digital solutions that help our clients make better decisions and achieve better outcomes.

While awards acknowledge achievements, this milestone is really about the people behind the technology. Thank you to every member of the Interpine team for your commitment, creativity, and drive to keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

We're proud to represent Rotorua's thriving innovation community alongside the other outstanding finalists.

Congratulations to the businesses, organisations and individuals named as finalists in the 2026 Tompkins Wake Rotorua Business Awards.

03/08/2026

🌲 Explore a Forest Digital Twin in 3D

We've made one of our LiDAR datasets available through an interactive web viewer, allowing you to explore a forest from your desktop and see the incredible level of detail captured by our modern drone airborne LiDAR technology ( L3). The viewer includes classified point clouds showing terrain, vegetation structure, and other features collected during a recent survey.

Take control of the data yourself: ✅ Zoom, pan and fly through the forest
✅ View terrain and vegetation in full 3D
✅ Explore classified LiDAR returns
✅ See the raw information behind modern forest analytics

👉 Try the interactive viewer for yourself: https://lidarportal-worker.david-herries.workers.dev/Tui_ridge/Tui_ridge.html

This is Part 1 of a two-part story.

Later this week we'll show how Interpine's TreeTools SilvaCloud and Silvia CLoud Live platform transforms this same LiDAR dataset into operational forest inventory information, delivering actionable insights for forest managers, planners, and investors. Follow us to remain updated.

15/06/2026

Seeing pest pressure before it costs you.

Young radiata pine stands are most vulnerable in the first few years — and pest damage often happens before it’s even visible.
Using thermal and night vision drones, we can now:

Detect pest activity at night
Map density hotspots across your forest
Target control where it matters most

It’s a smarter, more proactive way to protect your forest investment from day one.

👉 Read more about how this technology is changing forest establishment: https://interpine.nz/protect-your-radiata-pine-forest-investment-mapping-pest-density-with-night-infrared-drone-technology/

10/06/2026

🚁 A decade of trusted drone operations across Aotearoa

Since achieving our CAA Part 102 certification in 2016, Interpine has led the way in safe, professional UAV operations across forestry and environmental sectors — now extended with BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) capability to reach further and operate smarter.

From supporting Government agencies such as Fire and Emergency NZ in developing drone response for wildfire, training and working alongside Ministry for Primary Industries, forest managers, power companies and universities, our team delivers high-quality data with a strong focus on safety, training, and best practice. Our drone services are backed by remote sensing expertise, turning flight data into actionable insights, and innovating new approaches.

We’re also proud contributors to industry initiatives like Flight Advisor NZ and Tools for Foresters, helping improve shared airspace safety and capability across the sector.

📊 Our track record:
• 2,450+ flight hours
• 34,500+ km flown
• 1.6+ million photos
• 4,900+ videos
• and many TBs of LiDAR

Experience matters — and so does what you do with the data.

👉 Learn more: https://interpine.nz/uav-drone-aerial-services/

09/06/2026

Monitoring Whio (Blue Duck) populations in New Zealand’s remote river environments has always been a challenging task. Steep terrain, dense vegetation, and limited access often constrain traditional survey methods. At Interpine, we’re leveraging advanced drone technologies to overcome these challenges and extend the reach and effectiveness of ecological monitoring.

Using our CAA Part 102 certification and Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operational capability, we can safely survey river systems well beyond conventional flight limits. This enables coverage of longer river stretches in a single mission, improving detection rates and reducing time spent in the field.

A key innovation enhancing these operations is drone mesh networking, which allows multiple systems or relay points to maintain communication over extended distances. By linking aircraft and ground control through a resilient network, we can push into previously inaccessible areas while maintaining operational safety and control.

More info: https://interpine.nz/surveying-whio-blue-duck-with-drone-technology/

27/05/2026

🌲 New cost saving insight from LiDAR for forestry operations: walking / machine hindrance mapping

Understanding how easy (or difficult) it is to move through a forest stand has always been important—but hard to quantify.

Our latest article shows how LiDAR can be used to map walking hindrance, turning vegetation density into a practical layer for planning and decision-making.

👉 Read more: https://interpine.nz/mapping-walk-hindrance-with-lidar-a-new-layer-of-insight-for-forestry-operations/

Forestry teams have always understood that how easy a stand is to move through has a real impact on field productivity, safety, and cost — but until now, it has been difficult to measure consistently at scale.

By identifying where movement is open, slowed, or heavily restricted, these maps can help with smarter crew deployment, better route planning, improved health and safety, and a clearer understanding of why operational costs vary from stand to stand.

Interpine’s TreeTools Silva Cloud now makes it possible to generate these hindrance maps directly from your LiDAR data.

If you’re looking to reduce wasted time in the field, improve operational visibility, and support more data-driven forestry decisions, this is well worth a look.

14/05/2026

🌲🤖 New in Virtual Plot: Chemical Thinning (eThinning) AI – ALPHA Release

We’ve just released an ALPHA Chemical Thinning (eThinning) AI model in TreeTools.ai Virtual Plot, supporting rapid post‑treatment stocking assessment using drone imagery.

Designed to detect remaining crop trees and distinguish them from chemically thinned stems showing stress or dieback, this new capability helps foresters evaluate the success of eThinning operations — particularly in steep or hard‑to‑access terrain.

This release is part of our collaboration with NZ Forest Growers Research – Precision Silviculture, and we’re inviting users to trial the model, share feedback, and help improve it using real‑world forestry data.

👉 Read the full article and learn how to get involved:
https://interpine.nz/introducing-chemical-thinning-ethinning-ai-in-virtual-plot-alpha-release/