V for volume and versatility

Summary
• Vandecasteele has 12ha of warehousing on a 60ha site in Aalbeke.
• It can deliver anywhere in Europe in 48 hours.
• The 125-year-old company can stock up to 120,000m³.
• Business is split 50/50 between hardwood and softwood.
• The company stocks PEFC and FSC timber, with all other material verified legal.
• The UK and Ireland account for 15% of Vandcasteele’s sales.

Standing on a grassy ridge overlooking a landscaped lake, Vandecasteele Houtimport's vast larch-walled warehouses have often featured in its TTJ advertising. But, however familiar you are with the image, nothing prepares you for the true scale of the space. You have to be there to appreciate it.

In total, the international softwood and hardwood importer and distributor has 12ha of undercover storage at its site in Aalbeke, Belgium. Individual warehouse bays are up to 450m long, with racking up to 7m high. Standing at one end, a sideloader at the other looks like a toy and the company logo on the side of the building stands around 6m top to bottom – floodlit at night, it’s Aalbeke’s equivalent of the Hollywood sign.

The whole Vandecasteele property covers 60ha, including 4ha of outside storage and the 4ha lake. You tour the operation in a golf buggy and it still takes half an hour to get round.

But UK sales manager Genevieve Standaert is quick to stress that the company is not just about size. “The warehousing is also organised to be as flexible and efficient as possible and to give us the ability to respond rapidly to orders,” she said. “All stock is bar coded so we know precisely where everything is. This enables us to run the operation with just 24 people and do our physical stock take in two days – and our capacity is 120,000m³.”

Delivery service

The company, she added, also has a 15-strong fleet of trucks and, combining this with contract haulage, can get urgent deliveries to most corners of Europe in 48 hours. “Geographically we’re ideally positioned, right next to a main motorway, 3km from the French border and with easy access to the ports where we bring in most of our timber, Ghent and Antwerp,” said Ms Standaert.

Vandecasteele has always been in the same location – although its site at the outset was slightly more modest. It began as a wheelwrights, working in conjunction with the local smithy. As sales grew, the company migrated into sawmilling, then timber trading, buying an ever-bigger slice of the town and surrounding farmland to accommodate its expansion.

Remaining a family-owned business throughout, it has seen particularly rapid growth under the direction of Urbain Vandecasteele and his son, the company’s present owner Stefaan. Now 82 and still taking an active interest in the company, Mr Vandecasteele snr built the first ‘hangar-style’ warehouse in 1968. Then, in the mid-70s, he had his big break. “Urbain bought a vessel-load of timber from Finland and, while it was en route, it doubled in price,” said Ms Standaert. “The money was immediately invested in the business.”

The next growth surge, with another burst of warehouse building, came in 1974 and the last 6ha was completed in 2004.

Warehousing

All the warehouses are virtually identical. That’s partly because the design works, but also to achieve a uniform look and minimise impact on the landscape – and to maintain the image, even Stefaan Vandecasteele’s house on the site was designed by the same architect.

“The company has always been concerned about its effect on the local environment,” said Ms Standaert. “This also lies behind our efforts to landscape the surrounding area; creating the lake and planting woodland around the site.”

The company, she added, is also responsible for the restoration of the original Flemish-style housing on the street front of its premises. Traces of the company’s roots can also still be seen here, with a yard opposite the entrance to the mill stacked with tropical hardwood logs – padouk, afzelia doussie, khaya, iroko and bosse, to name but a few of the species.

“Cutting to specification from the log is our traditional business, and we still do it for some customers, mainly Belgian merchants for special jobs,” said Ms Standaert.

The rest of Vandecasteele’s business in sawn lumber is divided 50/50 between softwood and hardwood, the former sourced from Scandinavia, Russia and North America, the latter, all tropical, from Brazil, Africa and South-east Asia.

Further processing, including planing and drying is also part of the service, with the work undertaken offsite by Belgian subcontractors. “We find this is best for efficiency and flexibility,” said Ms Standaert “and, to ensure uniformity and quality, we work with these companies long term.”

Vandecasteele’s stock is arranged by source, so touring the warehouse you’re constantly crossing continents. One bay might be all Brazil, the next Africa. The range of marks on the timber underlines the diversity of supply and also the international spread of the company’s markets, with customers able to have their own branding added to that of the shippers.

Environmental commitment

Environmental certification logos are also prominent, principally FSC on hardwood and FSC and PEFC on softwood. The company is clearly committed to the certification cause and works closely with suppliers undergoing the process. But, according to Ms Standaert, it sees this as an evolving issue and argues against promotion of one certification programme over others or abandoning sources which are not yet certified under these main schemes, provided, of course, that they are verified and documented as legal.

“We now hold around 20,000m³ of PEFC and 12,000m³ of FSC timber,” she said. “But, it’s a developing market, demand varies from country to country and we have to respond to that; the UK is heavily in favour of FSC, for instance, but in southern Europe it’s rarely requested. There are also different views on particular species. We’re careful about how we source all our timber, and insist absolutely on proof of legality, but we can’t sell merbau in the UK, for instance, due to its environmental image there, whereas elsewhere in Europe it’s still popular.”

Vandecasteele, she added, is always evaluating new sources and supports “pre-certification” programmes to raise forest management standards. It now stocks verified legal timber from Malaysia, for example, and has introduced Cameroon hardwoods supplied under the OLB (Origine Légale des Bois) scheme.

“Suppliers in these countries are working in difficult conditions with limited resources and it’s a miracle they’ve made the progress they have,” she said. “Rome was not built in a day and you cannot expect full certification to be introduced everywhere overnight.”

Key markets

While volumes vary year on year, the UK and Irish markets are consistently among Vandecasteele’s most important, accounting for around 15% of sales. It sells mainly hardwood here and its timber turns up in some pretty prestigious projects. Among the latest is the refurbished St Pancras station where it supplied 7,000m² of FSC jatoba for the mezzanine level flooring.

Currently, Ms Standaert acknowledged, the British and Irish markets are tough, with overstocking a concern. But Vandecasteele is positive about the longer term. “I don’t think people should panic and throw everything into the market to reduce stocks,” she said.

Certainly Vandecasteele itself seems confident about the future. “A strength we have, which is also a benefit to customers and suppliers, is that we’ve funded growth without debt, so we can wait for the market to move and, if necessary, swim against the tide.”

Further investment at Aalbeke underlines the company’s optimistic outlook. A new road is under construction to ease access to the motorway and the landscaping work which, together with Vandecasteele’s efforts in recycling, energy efficiency and waste minimisation have helped it win six regional environmental awards in recent years, also continues.

In addition, the company has commissioned new sales order processing software to boost efficiency and improve market communications. “Customers will be able to check on stocks on our new website,” said Ms Standaert.

Vandecasteele is also evaluating a new automated handling and wireless stock monitoring system. This will use a network of radio antennae to relay stock data to the central computer. And as another indicator of the scale of the operation, around 100 will be needed to cover the Aalbeke site.