A plan comes together

I'm of course talking about the TTJ Awards 2015 held on September 24. It's always nice when you've put so much effort into something to see it come off.

We'd like to take the opportunity again to thank all our sponsors for getting behind this year's TTJ Awards and to everyone who came, as well as the finalists and winners. And not forgetting Gyles Brandreth of course, who delivered on his raconteur credentials and enjoyed the first event standing ovation we can remember in the 19 years of the awards. We really appreciated the way he made himself part of our team for the day. Our full Awards review starts on page 43.

Timber Expo, the UK's only dedicated timber industry exhibition, had also just finished as we went to press. It was superbly organised by Media 10 and you can see that they are ambitious to make UK Construction Week the largest construction sector event in the UK.

As ever with new initiatives it's sometimes hard to judge the impact first time around. We'll probably have a better idea next year as they fine-tune the event.

It's fair to say that this year's Timber Expo elicited a wide range of feedback from exhibitors and visitors alike. We'll be running a more in-depth report on the show in next month's issue.

Meanwhile, in our report from the International Hardwood Conference in Copenhagen, delegates heard that China had emerged as a hardwood superpower, with its hardwood imports up from US$8bn to US$12bn in just five years.

And China's imports of European hardwood logs have hit the acceleration pedal rising from 41,500m3 in 2009 to 352,000m3 in 2014 - a real concern for French sawmills, as the lion's share of this volume has come from French forests.

The saving grace may be that China is also importing more sawn timber.

They'll be further interesting news on market dynamics when we attend the European Federation of Wooden Pallet and Packaging Manufacturers (Oct 28-30) in Cork this month, while we'll also be reporting from the International Softwood Conference (Nov 4-6) in Amsterdam. I am sure they will be lively affairs with lots of talk about the market situation.

It was great to interview Ted James of South London Timber for this month's Face to Face - he is a great character in the trade and it was interesting to hear how he'd built up the business over many years. His business has supplied some of the largest construction projects in London, including the Jubilee Line extension and Crossrail.

What was also heartening to hear is how he and colleagues believe in having a good training policy, passing on the training ethos he received when at Newsons in the 1970s.