British mills specialising in British-grown hardwoods have been enjoying strong demand of late.
“We go from busy to busier,” said Tom Barnes, managing director at Vastern Timber. “Demand is continually increasing and we’re up about 10% this year.”
Charles Ransford & Son Ltd, which markets its products as “Great British Timber”, reports a similar story and said the mill has been working at, or near capacity for several months. “We’ve experienced strong and consistent demand during the first half of the year and this shows no signs of easing off,” said Alistair Evans, operations director.
Tom Compton, managing director at English Woodlands Timber also said demand is “very strong” and added that the company is selling more this year due to higher stocks. The attitude towards Britain leaving the EU is best described as the jury still being out but there are some varying opinions on how it will impact the home-grown sector.
There is a widely held view that a weaker pound should work in domestic producers’ favour but most agree that business confi dence is what really matters.
“I think it [Brexit] will have a negative effect because the customer base is so dictated by confidence,” said Vastern’s Tom Barnes. “And I find it hard to believe that we will benefit against imports as I don’t think we will get to a point where there are crippling tariffs on imported wood because we can’t sustain ourselves on our own. We need imported wood or it will kill construction.”
Ransfords sees more of a silver lining, however.
“Like every other sawmill we would be affected if there was any slowdown in the UK economy arising from Brexit,” said Mr Evans. “However, we believe that the future outside Europe should be positive. It would be encouraging if we, as an industry, can extricate ourselves from as much red tape as possible.
“All our timber is grown in the UK from legal and sustainably managed forests and sold almost entirely into the UK market. It is ‘Great British Timber’ from a company that is part of a Great British industry and we must encourage all customers and potential customers in the UK to buy British wherever possible.”
Dave West, managing director of WL West & Sons, believes Brexit will have its greatest impact on imports of temperate species and said that, from a hardwood point of view, if buyers were to switch their focus onto British-grown timber, they would have to “start accepting different grades.”
“There’s nothing wrong with British timber – and there are elements of first quality in it – but it is a different grade and if we could change attitudes here it would certainly make the hardwood market a lot easier.”
When softwood fence panels are taken into account around 40% of WL West’s sales are made up of British-grown timber. For others, such as Vastern Timber, for example, it’s the whole raison d’etre. And, said Mr Barnes, it’s not just a case of nostalgia and patriotism, there’s a strong business case for dealing in British timber.
“If you were an accountant you would probably run a mile from British timber because you could go to France and buy a fully machined beam cheaper than it can be produced out of a log in Britain and you wouldn’t have all the costs associated with running a sawmill,” said Mr Barnes.
“But what you would end up with is merchants all trying to buy the same thing from the same place and then it becomes a bun fight of who can sell it the cheapest.
That doesn’t look like a particularly inviting place to be.” Being a British timber specialist also gives the company something to hang its marketing hat on and, of course, when a project comes up that specifies British timber, it’s automatically in the running.
“A lot of work came up at the Tower of London – furniture in the chapel, a new drawbridge, raven cages, a new exterior staircase – and we got all of it through four or five different contractors,” said Mr Barnes. “Because we stock British oak and had a lot of it there wasn’t a lot of competition for the job, whereas if it had specified European oak, everyman and his dog would have been in for it and we may not have got it.”
Vastern does import some species, for example, Canadian cedar, Siberian larch and French oak but always tries to sell the British-grown timber first. Imports provide a valuable fallback position if a customer has an aversion to, say, the knots in British cedar. Imported timber has also helped British producers up their game, said Mr Barnes.
“Imports provide healthy competition and have forced us as a sector to sharpen up, produce a better quality product and to become more efficient. It’s made us think about how we get a more consistent grade and to be less ‘rustic’.”
He added, however, that it’s important to know your product and not try to compete in every market.
“There would be little point in me cutting oak, kilning it, square edging it and trying to compete with the Italian-produced eastern European oak because our oak isn’t the sufficient quality. But where you’ve got uses for pippy oak or brown oak, then you can start pushing your products in there.”
Tom Compton at English Woodlands Timber said that oak, elm, larch and ash are the species most in demand and made the point that “non-oak” species were doing particularly well due to a lack of availability.
He also expressed concern over the impact of chalara disease on ash.
Ash is having something of a renaissance and some mills are processing more of the species not just because trees are being felled for phytosanitary reasons but also because there is more demand for it.
Vastern Timber is also processing more ash as it is using this species to produce Brimstone, its thermally modified timber.
However, oak remains far and away the most popular species with customers.
“It does prop up our business but I do get a bit bored of it,” admitted Mr Barnes. “That’s why it’s nice to see ash coming back. I would also like to see more use made of sweet chestnut because we have reasonable volumes of it in this country and it’s a much better joinery timber than oak.”
In terms of product types, WL West has benefited from a very buoyant fencing market and consistent demand for cladding. It sources a lot of Douglas fir cladding material from the neighbouring Cowdray estate.
The company is also working on the Coed Cymru ‘Endgrain’ initiative for making flooring tiles out of small dimension British timber.
“We have built the kiln and have modified the saw to cut them,” said Mr West. “When we get that online it will make it possible to bring in more small diameter British timber.
The cladding market has grown “hugely” for Vastern Timber and is one in which British species can compete well, said Mr Barnes. Cladding – “everything from rustic sawn to machined and very contemporary” – now accounts for around a third of the company’s business.
Investment continues within the hardwood mills. English Woodlands Timber is installing new racking for service delivery while Charles Ransford is replacing the log infeed and butt reducer, with Holtec as its chosen supplier.
“We will construct a new lorry park before the end of the year and in 2017 we are planning a significant investment in a new state-of-the-art treatment facility,” said Mr Evans. “We will also continue to invest and increase our forestry portfolio when the right opportunities arise.”
WL West installed a Weinig saw and an Altendorf sliding table board saw last Christmas while other areas marked out for investment include kilning capacity.
Vastern Timber secured a South West Growth Fund grant, which is helping it buy a Weinig P1500 moulder and two Combilifts towards the end of the year.
“We’re currently running one Weinig moulder and it is flat out so the plan is to speed up production and shorten lead times,” said Mr Barnes.
