Brexit ‘an opportunity to diversify into timber’

Booming prices for wood and standing timber offer real opportunities for farmers to diversify and plant a portion of their land with trees to create a more sustainable business model after Brexit, it has been claimed.

Such a move could also help reduce the country’s heavy reliance on cheap imported timber and offer confidence to the processors’ multi-million pound investment in the sector, according to timber trade body Confor.

Pointing to figures released by the Forestry Commission which showed that there had been a 30 per cent increase in the price of trees yet to be felled between March 2017 and 2018, the organisation said these reflected a booming wood processing industry – and highlighted the need to increase tree planting significantly in order to deliver more timber and avoid reliance on imports.

“We are already the world’s second-largest net importer of timber after China but the UK government is still missing its modest tree planting targets,” said Andrew Heald, Confor’s technical director.

“Confor is working with 0 Growing demand for timber has raised prices members and with governments across the UK to identify ways to bring more timber to market. It is vital that the major growers, including the Forestry Commission and Natural Resources Wales, maximise all opportunities to do this.”

Heald said prices had risen even more in some regional hotspots, including Dumfries and Galloway – and called for a longterm approach to forestry to secure future supply.

He stressed that while high timber prices were good news for the UK’S forest owners, times were tough for for sawmillers competing with cheap imports of sawn timber.

“A steady supply of round timber is essential for sawmillers and processors to plan their operations and to have the confidence to continue to invest in their mills and factories,” said Heald. But, emphasizing the opportunities, he highlighted the recent announcement of a £95 million investment by Norbord in its board factory in Inverness – saying it was one of the biggest inward investments in any business sector in Scotland in recent years.

He said that while this was on top of an annual investment of around £50m by the trade, confidence in supply was required if the industry was to compete with cheap imports in the long term and said what was needed above all else was a structured approach to longterm planning and that means more tree planting.

But while Scotland had been increasing its planting rates the rest of the UK was lagging behind – and Heald added that the supply crisis would only get worse in the future unless the problem was tackled now

“These statistics highlight the need for forestry and wood processing to be a much more central focus of the rural economy after Brexit,” he said..