Summary
• Timberpride started in 1995 with a Prince’s Trust loan.
• Structural oak beam business is up 77% this year.
• Weinig Group machinery forms the backbone of machining operations.
• Air-dried timber offers many advantages over KD.
With a name like Timberpride, it’s not surprising that the MD of this small Tetbury-based oak importer/merchant is infectious in his enthusiasm for wanting to supply the best quality oak.
Perhaps it is Alexander Golesworthy’s forestry background and having a scientist father who worked on the Saturn rockets for Apollo 11 that combine to give him this passion.
Today, the company has a turnover of about £750,000, delivers nationwide, has seven staff (as well as resident dogs Bertie and Wellington) and focuses on mostly trade business in the high-end sector, supplying joinery timber, beams, architectural oak and solid oak flooring.
The seeds for a timber marketing business were originally sown when Mr Golesworthy, while working on planting schemes in Suffolk, met his future business partner and wife Victoria. Initially, as a forester he had tried organising felling and sales of timber for the forest owner but this proved difficult to work in practice.
The business launched in 1995 with the support of a £2,500 Prince’s Trust loan, complete with a business mentor – the local vet – and based in a rented cattle shed in Gloucestershire.
The search for customers started with flicking through the Yellow Pages, while European oak was purchased through importers.
Mr Golesworthy said he was disappointed by lead times and so decided to import material himself, sourcing from several sawmills in the Loire region of France.
“We originally sourced English oak when we set up but as the volumes increased, it became impossible [to source and supply]. But France has a vast area which it has turned over to commercial forestry.”
Mr Golesworthy’s quest for quality and efficiency also resulted in exerting control over a further important area – machining.
When Timberpride went into oak flooring seven years ago it started by buying the product in, but quality issues arose, with T&G sections sometimes cut in the sapwood and breaking off.
Timberpride started using a contractor to machine boards, but about 15-20% would regularly have to be ditched because the contractor insisted on doing the planing in one-pass. This was wasteful and costly in raw material.
A move to the current three-acre purpose-built location at Tetbury five years ago saw a large investment in new machinery, including a Raimann Flexirip saw and Weinig Unimat five-head CNC moulder, allowing Timberpride to undertake all its machinery operations
The technology is capable of producing flooring, skirting and architraves, cladding (Timberpride’s oak cladding covers the sawmill’s exterior) and glazing beads.
Other machinery on site includes a Forestor bandsaw and Granada 500kg heavylift equipment.
High-end focus
Timberpride says it has fared well during the difficult last few years, thanks mainly to its concentration on the high-end sector.
“We have been very fortunate over the last few years when it has been very difficult,” said Mr Golesworthy. “People have still wanted to do up their properties to a high standard.
“Demand for high-end joinery has been much more steady. Lead times are getting shorter and shorter and customers are taking much longer to make a decision.
“Speculative work has almost died and the vast majority of jobs are going into owner-occupier properties.
“Oak conservatories and orangeries have been in quite big demand in the last 12 months.”
In the last financial year when economic times were tough, Timberpride’s sales were still growing. In March, the company recorded its best month of sales ever (4% higher than previous best month), while total sales are up 26% in the year to date. Structural beam sales are up 77%.
“They picked up and stayed up,” said Mr Golesworthy. “The number of enquiries is growing month on month and we are managing to get a good proportion of the enquiries.”
Architects are becoming keen on air-dried oak beams, which has also boosted sales of glazing covers and cladding.
Many oak beams are also being sold to merchants and to oak framing companies and builders for roof trusses. Glasgow and the Channel Islands have been popular buying regions, but 80% of the products are bought within a 40-mile radius of the company.
“Joinery timber is also doing well at the moment. Two years ago the flooring business switched off, but it is 63% up this year,” said Mr Golesworthy.
The company said the result highlighted the “defiance” of the high quality flooring sector in the face of an unstable economic climate, with a growing trend of customers trading up to higher value floors, which he said was in part due to a decline in the quality of international imports.
One thing Mr Golesworthy refuses to do is get drawn into unprofitable selling and he will not sell at cost price to compete.
“If someone out there is wanting to offer products at cost price then I’ll say to the client take it. Overall, it’s hard to make a living if you don’t return a profit.”
Fit-for-purpose products
Mr Golesworthy readily admits that one of his bugbears is the failure of the timber industry to sometimes supply fit-for-purpose products, which has a knock-on effect on the reputation of wood.
A typical example, he says, is the installation of KD oak which moves due to tension remaining in the wood. Mr Golesworthy said kiln-drying did nothing about tension in the wood and claimed that KD square edged joinery timber supplied in the UK to joineries was often not straight.
“If you have to resaw timber before it can be used, what’s the point of buying it? If it’s not straight, then it’s not square.”
“What we are doing is quite old-fashioned. Our joinery timber is air-dried for a year per inch of thickness. Kiln drying does not do anything about the tension in the wood. The oak tree hasn’t changed for 25,000 years.”
The seasoning process for air-dried timber releases most of these stresses and strains in the wood and, as a result, Timberpride says it is able to confidently offer ready-to-use timber in the right sizes, even supplying 250mm PAR product in 6m lengths.
“Joiners are polarised in their opinion of air-dried oak, some really like it and the squareness and straightness that we are offering. Others don’t buy it straight away, because they don’t see the benefits.”
But he said the saving in raw materials and the time-saving in not have to do additional processing was converting many.
“When they do buy from us they come back – they realise the amount of timber they have saved in their workshop [by not having to trim]”.
Timberpride also supplies KD wood, with product kiln dried after it completes the air drying process. The company operates a careful management process in sourcing and storage, including a climate controlled warehouse, to ensure product quality.
Mr Golesworthy stressed that kiln drying should not be a short-cut to getting the product to point-of-sale faster.
As well as being a fan of air-dried timber, he said he found it easier to get the raw material quality needed in waney edge rather than square edge.
Pointing out the oak boules in the factory, Mr Golesworthy surmised that a young cabinet maker would probably dismiss such wood with its splits and twists, as most haven’t seen traditionally prepared timber. But once he sees the quality and straightness of the wood cut, he would change his mind, he added.
As well as managing the drying process, Timberpride pre-machines timber to remove tension.
Floor boards, supplied at 8% moisture content and up to 250mm wide, are made to order, with lengths receiving an initial machining (tension cut) before a second cut a week later after tension has gone out of the board.
The result of the precise method of drying, machining and T&G profile, Mr Golesworthy says, is a more stable board which can be used with underfloor heating.
Temperate hardwoods
Though oak constitutes about 99% of work, Timberpride can also supply most of the temperate hardwoods. Mr Golesworthy said he would love to source a significant amount of elm, which would be a “tremendous opportunity” but it was difficult to source and in the demand-driven world, oak was the species that customers requested.
The recent addition of FSC and PEFC chain of custody certification has added a further boost to the company’s sustainability credentials, which already includes the recycling of all its waste.
Further developments planned include the construction of a new office and showroom, where it can display its flooring and other products.
