W.L. West & Sons Ltd.
Timber Talks - October 2007

Tree Rats - The future of woodland regeneration?

Autumn is here and as ever the leaves are turning. Some wonderful colours are on view, the leaves are now not working to create the oxygen in the same dynamic way as in spring and summer, but are collecting Nitrogen. When the leaves fall to the trunk base or blow to other sites, they enrich the soil with a leaf mulch rich in organic fertilisers ready to feed the tree in spring.
The tree rat - the now common Grey Squirrel has made few contributions but occasionally by losing or forgetting more over where they have misplaced its food source acorns, chestnuts & beechnut can offer regeneration in woodland and park areas.

Traditional trading - or random trading

It’s the time where the Trade is generally very busy, September, October and November are traditionally the busiest times of the year, yet September started ok but has slowed down. Most of the trade are feeling this, interest increases and uncertainties have left demand weak. Top end joinery work is steady and as ever the Public Spending is at it lowest in a cyclic year, so external public works are slack.
Recent figures in October showed that there was a fall in new construction by 4%. Private housing fell by 12% but housing association orders for new builds rose by a staggering 46%.

UK Auctions - Is this the best way for the timber industry?

It will shortly be the time of year to go to the British Timber Auctions. This is generally run by the Forestry Commission, selling just as ever, a mixed bag of very average timber. In France this year they are going to gain from a real state run organisation offering 28% of their forest areas given over to a very wide mixed range of hardwoods. Finland and Sweden are ahead in relation to the land mass areas given over to forestry but there is one major issue and that is that they specialise in softwoods!

61% of the French forestry is given over to hardwood. 40% is owned by the state. Our Forestry Commission looks decidedly sick in comparison. Obviously we do not have the same land mass area, in fact France is approximately twice the size with about the same population, but they do it so well, they exported 213,631m³ of Oak alone with a further 146,949m³ of beech. This is just in plank form not logs.
Currently they are putting a lot of effort in cultivating Douglas fir for constructional applications, this is growing and they can boast a crop cycle of 150 years in some parts!

What has happened to our Forestry? We have not bought any English Oak logs for two years now, there is poor quality and a stupid money being paid for very indifferent logs. These are offered in parcels with mixed grades. Don’t they realise there is no mining industry left? One senior person we spoke to recently at Bentley Wood Show told us that the trees being cut down to make way for the long awaited Hindhead tunnel, are generally being chipped for heat and electrical generating plants: ‘Its easier’ was the comment.

Imported cost of this raw material will rise. France is now exporting up to 70% abroad. What a lost opportunity for the hard working tax payer who cannot get the environmental, plus practical benefits of this payback in a natural renewable resource.

In passing, they made apparently 11,659,227m² of flooring last year. The French Government will increase its production to offer the French Electrical generating system to come on line and burn wood to produce 300mW of energy. Still, we beat them at rugby!!!! Shame we fell at the last hurdle!
The market in America is still short in some species, although the dollar has been trading at approx 2$ to the £ sterling. As always they push up their selling price to equate to some kind of stability in their eyes. The strike in Canada looks to be prematurely over, some 17000 timber workers were affected, which resulted in the shortage of Western Red Cedar and Douglas Fir. It may take till Jan/Feb to correct itself in the supply chain. Prices continue to be expensive.

African prices stabilise

African prices are at last stabilising but so far not dropping back, there are some very mixed prices in the Idigbo sector, 63mm is very scarce at the moment so beware this should correct itself in Dec / Jan 2008.
Sapele is still the best all round good buy for red hardwoods, ensure it’s Cameroon stock if possible and the similarities to Utile are quite remarkable.
To improve our yard facilities we are going to change the method we select timber and moving our tallymen to one timber picking area where we will be able to select with more efficiency. This will come on line very shortly.

Projects

We have won a very impressive job for Kew gardens’ new Herbarium building and cannot wait to get stuck into drying and machining. More information to follow. We have also won an exciting contract to supply our square edged Oak to Northern Ireland for an ongoing project.

Record Power

The Record Power open days were a success and we sold to the enthusiasts some good kit for woodworking for the autumn onwards
We have access to Records Power’s professional range - Startright. The professional range could be of interest in your workshop. Please call if you would like some guidance on new machines.
 
Thank you again for your support we really appreciate the trade.

 W.L. WEST & SONS LTD
Selham, Petworth, West Sussex GU28 0PJ
United Kingdom

Tel: 01798 861611   
Fax: 01798 861633   
E-mail: sales@wlwest.co.uk

Other Newsletters