In deepest Wales, a £150,000 annual turnover timber company is proving you don’t have to be big and flashy to win prestigious contracts – while ensuring the sustainability of native woodland to boot. The Pembrokeshire Timber Store was established in Haverfordwest in 1999 as a joint venture by Coed Cymru and Pembrokeshire County Council (PCC). Established with grant aid from the EU and the council, the Pembrokeshire Timber Store is now self-financing and wholly owned by PCC. It is an – almost – unique example of a local authority operating as a business and functions on a not-for-profit basis, with all surplus revenue ploughed back into the stock.
The aim, as Coed Cymru officer Iwan Parry, who manages the scheme explained, was to bridge the gap between harvesting native Welsh woodland and local manufacturing.
The initiative set out to buy logs from local woodlands, saw, air dry, kiln dry and sell the timber. The grant aid enabled the purchase of a double slabber saw and further funding from the Welsh Development Agency and the National Parks Sustainable Development Fund led to the installation of a kiln.
Crucially, the funding allowed the Timber Store to build a stockpile of around 400-450m3 of hardwood, thus guaranteeing consistency of quality and continuity of supply.
The Timber Store’s remit to promote the use of local hardwoods sees it buying a range of timber including oak, ash, sycamore, birch, alder, beech and sweet chestnut. It has five regular suppliers and a considerably larger number of “ad hoc” sources.
Every woodland is personally inspected by Mr Parry. “It ensures that the timber we have is sustainable and comes through the Woodland Grant Scheme or through felling licences,” he said.
The logs are all machined by private sub-contractors to stock dimension and returned to the Timber Store. Here it is air dried for 6-12 months, then kiln dried down to 9%mc. After grading the timber is ready for sale as joinery or flooring. Further processing enables the supply of value-added products such as skirtings and architraves, laminated worktops and garden gates.
Hardwood flooring makes up about 60% of sales and local manufacturer James Ratford Bridge Ltd carries out the necessary machining on behalf of the Timber Store. “The majority of the timber we have in Wales is small dimension which lends itself to flooring,” said Mr Parry.
The average sale is around £500 and the typical customer is the local builder undertaking property renovation. But atypical customers now feature in the portfolio.
“One of our most prestigious contracts is for the new National Assembly building in Cardiff,” said Mr Parry. “We’ve supplied 40-50m3 of Welsh oak for fixed furniture in the main debating chamber and in the adjoining conference rooms.”
The furniture, which was built and is being installed by Keith Evans Contract Furnishers Ltd in Bridgend, is a landmark for the Pembrokeshire Timber Store because “it demonstrates that we can provide high quality, native timber to prestigious projects. In the past it’s been extremely difficult to get Welsh oak into the larger projects,” said Mr Parry.
The Timber Store is now pitching to supply Welsh oak cladding for the new Environment Centre for Wales at Bangor University and the most exciting aspect of these larger contracts is that it means the Timber Store can “secure further developments”. It is considering expanding into laminating and finger-jointing, while a more imminent product offering is heat-treated timber.
“Oak is by far our main seller and one of our challenges is to convince people that the other hardwoods have equally good properties. The development of our heat treatment process will allow us to turn non-durable species into durable timber for doors and windows.”
The key to Pembrokeshire Timber Store’s success, it says, lies in being flexible enough to keep up with trends while still gently steering the market in the direction of small dimension native Welsh hardwood and, as Iwan Parry is keen to point out: “It’s a credit to the local authority that they’ve had the confidence to go with Coed Cymru and set this up”.
Monmouthshire County Council now has a similar operation, the Wentwood Timber Store in Caldicot, and the hope is that four to six timber stores will operate in Wales in the future.
“We’re seen within the hardwoods sector in Wales as being a good blueprint for others,” said Mr Parry. “There’s been a lot of scepticism regarding developing and using Welsh hardwoods but we’ve proved that you can do it and it can pay for itself.”
