Oak accounts for around 50% of Friedrich Schnatmeier GmbH’s business and the sawmill processes 6,000-8,000m³ of oak logs per year, contributing around €2m to overall turnover. All the logs are sourced from within Germany.
At least two artic lorry loads of oak head for the UK each month, but it’s not just the volume and value of the exports that are important to the company, but also the learning curve.
“The UK market has taught me a lot and introduced me to new products,” said managing director Petra Schnatmeier. “For example, I understand how to cut a jowel post correctly – the top end of the jowel post has to be at the bottom of the former tree to follow the grain structure. Not many carpenters in Germany bother about things like that.
Learning curve
“The UK market also appreciates quarter sawn oak and medullary rays. It sounds so easy to saw it to get those features, but it isn’t – we had to learn it. And Germans don’t have a term for pippy oak, but in the UK it’s a grade.”
Other products Schnatmeier has introduced to cater for the UK market include feather-edge boards – “it’s influencing the German market now because people see it in my yard and like it” – and air-dried brace timber, sawn from “jumbo-sized” logs.
“We like the fact that English customers appreciate well-seasoned, air-dried timber. An English customer said he liked our oak boules for window production and that they had obviously been stored in the shed for a long time because there was very little wind checking. No German customer has ever commented on the lack of wind checking!”
“Of course, we have very good timber framers in Germany,” said Mrs Schnatmeier, “but when it comes to the use of oak in England you can tell that the traditions are very much more alive and that good timber is really appreciated.”
