With the persistent challenges the UK home grown timber industry faces we are making a few changes with regards to our firewood.
From the 1st of September 2023 and thereafter we will be increasing the prices of our firewood.
With rising costs of diesel, labour and machinery, coupled with the increase of standing timber at point of source we will be moving our prices to suit what we feel is fair.
The new price list will be: -
Naturally seasoned
Single £125
Double £250
Kiln dried
Single £145
Double £290
The above prices are for tipped loads, which is the nearest point we can get our delivery vehicle.
You can choose to have to logs stacked in your desired location, (Please note we DO NOT stack inside homes)
Stacking will now be
£25 for a single load
£50 for a double load
Kindling
£9 or 3 for £25
This will still be sold in the reusable 25kg sacks
To keep clarification, the loads are
1 cubic meter LOOSE - single
2 cubic meter LOOSE - double
As a business we buy our timber from competitive standing sales/auctions from the grower or agent. We then harvest it using state of the art equipment and technology. It’s brought back to our HQ where we then convert the round wood lengths into logs, some of the logs are put through our renewable energy kiln before being stored in our barns ready for delivery. This is a basic summary of all of the processes involved in obtaining and creating your logs.
We are facing some difficult times with regards to plant health as numerous species of hardwoods and conifers face diseases and invasive pests that are causing devastating results in UK woodland. The most talked about is Hymenoscyphus fraxineus or Chalara ash dieback. In principle this has been spreading over the country since early 2000 infecting thousands of acres of woodland and resulting in the removal of the majority of ash from out roadsides, homes, amenity woodland and sadly commercial woodlands.
The amount of timber available to market is becoming less and less each year as more and more ash is felled. It must be said that where ever an area is completely removed of trees it’s a legal requirement to restock the area with new young trees for the next generation.
As a country we need to diversify as to how we plant to provide fuel for the market in the coming years whilst the newly planted trees grow to create future crops.
In Scandinavia and areas in Europe they burn softwood on wood burning stoves and have done successfully for hundreds of years. When correctly dried down to the right moisture content like all timber, softwood burns just as well and in some cases hotter than hardwood. Admittedly it doesn’t burn as long but correctly dried and burnt it can still be a fantastic source of heat.
With this in mind we are now going to offer an “Stove mix”. This is for people with wood burning stoves or wood burners NOT for open fires. This will be a 50/50 mix of hardwood and softwood. We will try and complement the quicker burning softwood with some of the slower burning hardwoods to make a mix that should give results the same as pure hardwood.
In years to come we will also offer a pure softwood load.
Why do this you ask?
In summary…
UK reserves of hardwood available to the open market are running low. There is still a good percentage of softwood available but it also grows much faster and generally is much more resistant to diseases and pests. If we can just adapt to using it going forward, then as a country we should manage to weather a storm that’s likely to take 15-20 years before hardwood reserves are back in good supply.
There will still be hardwood available but it will get more expensive as years move on.
Our new “stove mix” will be like the others and done on a single and double load basis. This will be kiln dried for the time being till we can build stock in the yard to naturally seasoned, this will take at least 12 months.
The prices are
Stove mix single
£125.00
Stove mix double
£250.00
The elephant in the room………….
We fully appreciate that energy prices have affected us all and made things extremely tight and difficult at times. The prices of oil and gas seem to peak and trough with no real pattern. We are trying to keep in line with our costs NOT live in the wake of the energy companies. However, if we are not too careful firewood will become a luxury item and almost too expensive to burn. That’s why we feel it’s time to use a more cost effective alternative and in time maybe use this for a period of time whilst UK woodland catches up.
To remind everyone, all our timber is sourced from sustainable forest management from woodland that has been managed to create these fantastic products we can use. We are extremely passionate about home nation timber and are members of the Grown in Britain and woodsure organisations who are advocates for controlling and monitoring UK timber production.
Thanks for reading and for your continued support and understanding.
