The project was part funded by the Rural Development Programme for England under the Countryside Productivity Forestry Grant scheme.
The development is part of Certainly Wood’s ongoing commitment to sustainable methods, as it gives the business the means to deal with woodland thinnings of all sizes.
The new processor was manufactured by Italian firm Pinosa and runs alongside Certainly Wood’s existing Pinosa machine. Not only can it handle trees of up to 780mm in diameter, it also dramatically increases output with up to 100 tonnes produced each day.
Working alongside the manufacturer, Certainly Wood has also developed a unique grading system, which sorts out the larger logs having been initially split and sends them to another machine to split them again – once a time-consuming process done by hand.
The logs then pass over a final cleaning system to remove any smaller pieces of wood that don't make the grade – any waste product goes off to the boiler to be fed into the kilns. The final product is sent direct to an automatic bin filling system.
The investment will enable the business to achieve its target output of 20,000 tonnes per year of British-grown kiln dried logs and around 2,000 tonnes of poplar kindling. Certainly Wood only uses timber that comes from within a 100 mile radius of its farm.
