Selling the message

I write this piece sitting in my office in Coillte’s headquarters in Co Wicklow, about 30 minutes south of Dublin City, in a state-of-the-art timber building on the edge of a forest. This building is a great example of the use of wood to create a wonderful ‘green’ work environment. It’s made from sustainable materials, is very well insulated and is heated primarily by solar power, backed up by biomass boilers.

Coillte today employs 1,200 professionals, across a range of activities, who deliver on our core purpose – the sustainable management of natural resources. Our FSC-certified forest estate covers 7% of the land area of Ireland. The Irish forest estate, of which Coillte is the largest individual owner/operator, provides the basis for a world-class Irish timber industry providing sawn timber and panel products, under the Medite and SmartPly brands, to customers in the British Isles and beyond. Alongside our core timber businesses we are a developer of wind farms and a provider of telecoms mast and hosting facilities.

Rapid rate of change

After only a little more than three years at the helm of Coillte I am still very much a newcomer to the timber business. My 20 years in technology (primarily telecoms) businesses have witnessed the communications revolution. The rise of mobile telephony, followed by the explosion of the internet have truly changed the world in which we live. As I look back on that period the most striking take-away was the rapid rate of change. The human factor which facilitated this rapid technological change and which is most impressive, was people’s openness to change, to embrace this new way of doing business that, in a relatively short period of time, saw business models fundamentally altered. As we celebrate Darwin200 this is a great example of adaptation and survival.

I believe that we are at an equally critical phase in the continuing evolution of the timber industry and the key trends in our sector have the potential to offer exciting new opportunities, as well as the opportunity of extinction.

First, we see increasing demand for sustainable building materials, specifically for timber. The various green homes announcements and intentions to reach zero carbon standards will increase demand for sustainable materials.

Alongside this is the growth in competing uses for timber, specifically in the biomass/renewable energy space. While this demand is somewhat artificial in that the viability of burning timber is underpinned by various renewables incentive schemes and subsidies, it is likely that such incentives will stay in place for the foreseeable future.

Climate change

A further dimension is added as we approach Copenhagen ’09 and the carbon value of Kyoto-compliant forests is reckoned. Key question! At what price per tonne for carbon does the forest owner achieve a better return by leaving the forests standing and leaving harvesting for some yet-to-be-announced carbon sink scheme?

The warming of our atmosphere by almost half a degree Celsius per decade is a trend that all of us, even the sceptics, now recognise. A very tangible requirement for forest owners will be to select new species that are viable in the warmer climatic conditions with different rainfall patterns.

Add to these trends the very real challenge of financing the expansion of our businesses post the ‘crunch’. The era of low-cost, readily available credit is past. There are lots of big issues on the table and in the midst of this uncertainty the key question is what to do.

I am concerned that we in the timber industry believe that we have an automatic right to be a part of this sustainable future. I think that this is a very dangerous perspective. It is precisely at times like these, of major shifts, that whole industries get left behind. Look across the pond at GM, the icon of the US car industry, fighting for its very survival. I get the feeling that the timber industry looks to its legacy as its ticket to the future. In times of turbulence nothing could be further from the truth.

Marketing

There is no doubt that wood is good, but we don’t have a great record of marketing our offerings and now more than ever we need to convince a broad public of the relevance of what we offer to underpin a sustainable future.

Timber is a great product and has the potential to address many of the challenges that climate change brings. But the timber industry will need to up its game to avail of these opportunities and to profit from them. We need to learn from rapid change in other sectors and be flexible and proactive in how we sell our message. If we do that we will succeed. If we don’t, we face an even more uncertain future.