A couple of hefty, high-profile contracts will enable Russwood Joinery Products (RJP) to achieve its goal of doubling turnover to £200,000 this year.
And according to director Ivor Davies, the level of interest in the company’s timber windows, doors, cladding and flooring has the potential to maintain strong growth for the foreseeable future. ‘The market is not a constraint,’ he insists, ‘but it’s a case of whether we want to grow that fast.’
The two substantial contracts won this year include a deal worth £54,000 to supply 100 Scottish oak window frames to Dundee Council for use in refurbishing a sheltered housing complex in the city’s Powrie Place. And by early next year, the company expects to have completed a contract to supply large, glazed doors and windows – again in Scottish oak – to the Glencoe Visitor Centre in a deal ultimately worth around £60,000.
Mr Davies believes that, ultimately, RJP can achieve a similar size to the Russwood sawmill company from which it emerged and which turns over around £500,000 per year.
Formed by John Russell in the mid-1980s at Newtonmore in the Scottish Highlands, the Russwood venture initially sold coal, gas and firewood but took a major step forward in the mid-1990s by installing a post plant. Supply of fencing materials to customers throughout the Strathspey region now represents the company’s major business stream, although Russwood also sells sawn timber, firewood, coal and gas to customers in the local area.
The joinery side of the business was developed primarily to meet the needs of local estates and farmers, although there have also been lucrative links with TV film companies. For example, Russwood has provided joinery services – such as wooden cabin mock-ups – for the BBC‘s popular Monarch of the Glen series filmed at nearby Laggan.
The joinery contribution to Russwood’s turnover was ticking along at around £100,000 purely through word of mouth but, having tested the windows market in the late 1990s, Mr Russell was convinced there was potential to grow the business. RJP effectively made its bow at last year’s Scotbuild exhibition in Glasgow where Russwood’s cladding, flooring and – above all – window products made a big impact.
‘Hardwood windows have this perceived higher value,’ explains Mr Davies. ‘There is no need to paint our windows and so they are low maintenance, they could be made mostly from Scottish wood and they are preservative-free – these are the selling points that we have been majoring on.’
These arguments were not lost on the buyers behind the Dundee and Glencoe projects. Dundee Council had been keen to source windows featuring home-grown timber in order to support its own positive stance on sustainability, while the low maintenance requirement for the windows was also persuasive. Meanwhile, the Gaia Scotland architects’ firm handling the Glencoe Visitor Centre enjoys a strong environmental reputation and was insistent that most of the timber should be sourced in Scotland.
RJP takes care of the sales and lamination work on its windows although manufacture is subcontracted. At the same time, a proportion of its cladding products are made in-house, while its flooring products are bought in. The customer base for windows extends from self-build buyers to refurbishment and even large projects; flooring goes mainly into the self-build sector, while cladding is destined mainly for the specified market and partly also for self build.
RJP was given fresh impetus at the start of this year when Ivor Davies joined John Russell and Norman MacArthur as directors of RJP. Mr Davies had been a leading light at the Highland Birchwoods initiative formed in 1992 with backing from the Forestry Commission, Scottish Natural Heritage, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Highland Council.
Now turning over around £1m each year, the organisation promotes best practice in the management and use of Scotland’s forest resource. Over recent years Highland Birchwoods has helped Russwood and similar companies with grants, technical support and assistance in attending trade shows.
Mr Davies is completing his existing workload with Highland Birchwoods, which has included a leading role in a study commissioned by the Scottish Executive into the historical precedents and innovative future use of timber cladding on buildings. The final report is due to be published by HMSO in November.
According to Mr Davies, contracts such as those in Dundee and Glencoe help to destroy the myth that good quality Scottish hardwoods are not readily available. Nevertheless, he believes financial realities will force RJP to reduce the proportion of Scottish timber used in its products.
‘We will still use home-grown timber as much as possible, but customers want quality at a reasonable price and so I’d be mad not to buy in from France,’ he says. ‘We will continue to make oak windows because they are a great product, but we will use less home-grown until the economic circumstances change.’
The customer base clearly appreciates the professionalism and technical back-up available through RJP, with demand so great that business has to be turned away. ‘Our market is purely in Scotland,’ says Mr Davies. ‘We get calls from the south but we can’t keep up with the level of demand for the product.’
And while the company’s windows may have been the focus of attention to date, Mr Davies is also extremely bullish about the sales potential of its cladding. ‘The product is taking longer to grow but we are very upbeat about the prospects,’ he says.
The management team’s confidence in – and commitment to – the future of the joinery business is exemplified by the £60,000 it has invested in creating a sales centre for its products at the company’s Newtonmore premises. At the same time, an upstairs area will provide RJP with much-needed new office space.
And so, given this huge level of optimism, will RJP be looking to double turnover again next year to £400,000? ‘We are very upbeat because, for the most part, the customer is interested in a good quality product at a decent price – and we can do that,’ says Mr Davies. ‘We aim to grow at a healthy rate, but at a pace consistent with sanity. We sit in the middle ground between large and small sawmills and feel we have got a very good niche if we can hold it together.’
