Opportunities for the future

Predicting the future can be a mug’s game at the best of times, especially in the timber industry, and this can hardly be described as one of the most auspicious moments for the sector to be looking into its crystal ball. Nevertheless – and despite hatches being battened down all round in the hope of riding out the ongoing financial storm – it is not a bad time to look beyond current troubles and plan for the upturn when it inevitably comes.

Take, for example, the timber frame housebuilding sector – just as it was beginning to make real headway in England, demand for new housing suddenly collapsed. The need for new homes has not gone away, however, but when the market recovers we may well find there is a dearth of traditional building skills. All the more reason to look to those systems best able to deliver the offsite modern methods of construction that will allow speed of erection and on-site efficiencies.

Two-year hiatus

Current indications suggest a two-year hiatus before market conditions return to somewhere close to last year’s peaks, but 2010 is also the year when Eurocode 5 comes into place and with it a step change in structural engineering calculation methods for timber from permissible stress to ultimate limit state. Some manufacturers and suppliers of individual building components such as I-joists have been gearing up for the change, but it is the engineering behind the way in which these elements fit together and how the whole envelope interacts that will be the major trick to master over the next year or so.

Implementation of the Code for Sustainable Homes is also looming on the near horizon, a profound change in energy and insulation standards that could well benefit the home-grown timber market, especially Sitka spruce. Greater thicknesses of thermal insulation will need deeper sections of timber to accommodate the material, a technical response to a legislative demand that can overcome questions about Sitka’s inherent stiffness. Time spent now developing new designs and construction methods able to deliver the desired environmental standards will ensure the ground can be hit running when the upturn finally turns up.

Environmental concerns

Environmental concerns are also central to the country’s burgeoning biomass sector, a substantial market that is taking increasing amounts of the poorer quality home-grown timber resource that is available. The corollary to this, of course, is that the board and panel manufacturers who previously had pretty much exclusive access to this raw material are now forced to compete in the market place for it and prices of their products will surely increase as a result.

Modified wood products were just beginning to penetrate UK market consciousness before the tectonic plates of finance shifted to everyone’s disadvantage. Most material (Accoya, Thermowood and so on) is imported and so long as the pound struggles against the euro, the cost of bringing it here will continue to be high.

Again though, concern for the environment should come to the fore since the need for alternatives to non-sustainable tropical hardwoods and conventional preservative-treated timber is unlikely to go away. These factors, in parallel with increasing demand for timbers able to boast substantially enhanced performance characteristics, suggest that life cycle considerations will ultimately triumph over initial capital cost issues.

Structural panels

If I were in the business of prediction, though, I’d be putting what remains of my battered savings into manufacturers of massive timber panels. Far from being a gamble, this is what used to be referred to as a ‘banker’ before the term became so badly corrupted.

Over the past two or three years, interest among architects and other construction industry specifiers in the use of massive timber elements has skyrocketed – partly as a result of the product’s environmental plus points (carbon storage, reduced carbon emissions, insulation value, airtightness, reduced energy requirements and so on) and partly for speed and safety of erection.

Houses, schools and sports halls have been in the vanguard of a wave of innovation in the use of the product in the UK but, with the market for it increasingly well established, the much bigger challenge is to manufacture massive timber panels in this country from UK-grown timber.

The technology exists, but its application to Sitka is the bit that needs to be delivered. A potentially huge opportunity, it requires investment. If the necessary R&D can be carried out now, though, a glorious, high-added-value product could be ready for market when the upturn appears. For the bold, the Golden Fleece is there for the taking.