W.L West & Sons Ltd
Our company Profile

The West family, for as long as anyone can remember, has been involved with timber. In the middle nineteenth century, they were journeyman sawmillers, felling timber and sawing from a pit in the woods where the timber was cut.

Earliest company records are dated in 1865. The company in its present form, is a traditional home-grown timber merchant who started trading, as W. L. West & Sons, on a permanent site at Midhurst about eighty years ago, sawing round logs by means of pit saws. Mechanisation over the years progressed through steam powered engines and belt driven saws to a fully modern sawmill today. The company was incorporated in 1956 as a limited company.

In 1986, the Company moved to a much larger twelve acre site at Selham, midway between Midhurst and Petworth (just off the A272), to purpose built sawmills and factory with computerised oil fired kilns.

As well as having extensive outside air drying stocks, over fifty thousand square feet of drying sheds have been erected to hold stocks of air-dried and kiln-dried timbers. Continual growth in the Company has meant that it is now one of the larger temperate hardwood sawmills in the country and second to none as far as English oak is concerned.

Forward capital project planning has always been designed to ensure that the infrastructure, machinery and stockholding is such that the growing requirements of the market place can easily be met.

It is pleasing that the business is still firmly in family hands, with five of Walter Luke West's grandchildren and four of his great-grandchildren involved in the business. Walter Luke West can be seen in the picture at the top of this page.

Health & Safety Policy Statement

Our company policy is to provide and maintain safe healthy working conditions, equipment and systems of work for all our employees, and to provide such information, training and supervision as they need for this purpose. We also accept our responsibility for the health & safety of other people who may be affected by our activities.

We recognise that safety is the responsibility of everyone within the organisation and is not purely the responsibility of the management. Employees have a responsibility to take reasonable care of themselves and anyone who may be affected by their activities and actions.

The policy will be kept up to date, particularly as the business changes in nature and size. To ensure this, the policy and the way in which it is operated will be reviewed annually.

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W.L.West & Sons Ltd was registered in the United Kingdom.

The company number is 577291 and the registered office is:

W.L.West & Sons Ltd, Selham, Petworth West Sussex, GU28 0PJ