Quietly competitive

Summary
• Robin Howie entered the timber industry in the mid 1970s.
• His career began at James Jones.
• Howie Forest Products dates back 150 years.
• Robin launched an MBO in 1998.
• The latest £15m investment gives Howie annual capacity of 500,000m³.

Scottish entrepreneurs are often characterised as quietly understated, but innovative risk takers. Robin Howie fits neatly into the mould. At 51 years old, with the largest softwood sawmill in the UK, he can rightly lay claim to a seat at the table. Clearly the company’s development has involved serious application and business acumen. But, Robin modestly insisted that it has also been down to timing.

“I’ve had some lucky breaks, where things have worked out well,” he said. “And now the climate for UK sawmilling is ideal for the launch of a mill that produces 500,000m³ of softwood on a single shift.”

One of five children, with Rhona Martin, captain of the Scottish gold medal winning curling team at the 2002 winter Olympics as a sister, life was probably quite competitive in the Howie household.

“I’ve never been into curling, but I do enjoy my golf and shooting when I get the time,” said Robin, who had to be pressed to reveal that he was, in fact, a scratch player as a junior and now plays off 11.

As for the business, Robert Howie and Sons was a 150-year-old family business, based in Dunlop, Ayrshire. The group had diverse interests encompassing a wide range of farming and land-based businesses, including timber harvesting, which led to the Dalbeattie sawmill being started in 1978 for pallet wood production. Robin, himself, was at college in 1976 when his father suggested getting involved.

“I was sent to James Jones for two years, working in their felling and sawmilling businesses,” he said. “It was a superb place to learn about the trade while the mill was set up.” By 1982 Dalbeattie had switched to constructional timber. “We’d seen a growing market and were cutting around 30,000m³ of logs,” said Robin. “I’d be buying a few thousand at a time – a day’s production today. What I’d have done for a mobile phone instead of a klaxon in the yard back then.”

A willingness to innovate has obviously always been there and over the next few years timber preservation, stress grading and kilning facilities were added.

“It took a while for kiln dried timber to take off,” said Robin. “We were quite early in the market.” Another large investment came in 1996 with the addition of an 80,000m³ short log mill.

“We were really growing by this stage,” said Robin. “We were heading for 200,000m³ capacity and offering a variety of cutting and machining services. The DIY market was growing strongly, together with our fencing and tiling batten products.”

To cope with the expansion, the Howie team was also developing, with joint managing director Hamish Macleod joining in 1993 to run the mills. The next seismic shift for the business and Robin’s life was in 1998. The increasingly diverse Howie business needed focus and he decided the way to achieve this was to acquire it.

“I realised the best way to approach it was to buy the entire group from the other shareholders. It ended up being a straight forward arrangement really, but organising a management buyout whilst working full time involved a great deal of extra work.”

So Robin ended up in 2001 running seven businesses covering farming, animal feeds, quarrying, fencing, construction and sawmilling, employing 320 people.

He now faced the task of divesting the parts which were not wanted longer term. “I sold these and now my brother Neil runs the quarrying, fencing and construction, while I concentrate on sawmilling,” he said, adding that his daughter Laura (who has clearly inherited the competitive Howie genes and is also a successful showjumper) now plays an increasing role in sales, alongside sales director Keith Ainslie.

And the Howie story continues, which brings us to the very latest development – the company’s £15m mill expansion. Robin explained: “Around 2003 I realised that with long term supply contracts, an excellent site situation, especially for log supply, we could take the business forward. I studied a variety of different sawmilling lines, but knew the one for us would be a Linck, which are used in 19 out of the 22 largest European sawmills.”

The new plant, running alongside Howie’s existing plant, came on stream late in 2006, with dramatic effect.

“We’ve moved from 260,000m³ in 2005 to around 400,000m³ in 2007,” said Robin. “The mill can do two shifts and produce 500,000m³ on each and all with the same workforce.” Once again, he added, “great people made it happen”, with project manager Peter Ross overseeing the mill development.

As for the future, Howie now has plans to install high speed planing lines and sonar-based Goldeneye grading. The arrival of wood-fuelled power plants has also created a big shift on demand for co-products with two near the mill alone consuming 1 million tonnes a year.

Maintaining his mastery of understatement, Robin said he is “pleased with the way it’s going” at the company and that Howie Forest Products is doing “quite well”.