Summary
• James Jones built its first processing facility at Steven’s Croft in 2001/02.
• Lockerbie 3 is the result of a £22.5m investment.
• A single shift capacity of 140,000m³ is the initial target.
• The main saw-line is by Soderhamn Erikson and is the company’s largest order to date.

For a 35-acre site and two – shortly to be three – processing facilities, James Jones & Sons Ltd’s Lockerbie site has a remarkably small car park.

It’s the only thing that is small about the wood-processing complex and its modest size is simply an indication of the emphasis the company has placed on high levels of efficiency and automation in recent years. “We can do a lot more with the same number of people,” said sales manager Keith Ainslie.

James Jones’s Lockerbie odyssey goes back to the turn of the millennium when the local enterprise company earmarked Steven’s Croft, on the outskirts of the Scottish town, for development as a site of timber excellence.

When early plans for a chipboard plant fell through, James Jones was quick to seize the opportunity and bought half the site (Forest Garden plc and AW Jenkinson Forest Products also have facilities on the site, plus there is an E.On wood-fuelled power station).

It has now almost finished building its second and largest sawmill within the group on the site, which will shortly replace the existing facility at nearby Dumfries.

Centre of excellence

The company’s decisive action meant that it could fulfil its ambition of establishing a southern Scotland centre of excellence and distribution site. It operates six sawmills, at Mosstodloch, Kinnoir, Aboyne, Kirremuir, along with Lockerbie and Dumfries and, historically, has had a northern bias. “All our mills have been strategically developed to maximise available raw materials according to specific target markets, relative to the mills’ particular geography. The northern mills remain tremendously important to the company’s overall portfolio but Lockerbie brings a new dimension,” said Mr Ainslie.

The small log pallet and fencing line Lockerbie 1 was first off the starting blocks in 2001/02. “It only took a modest proportion of the site but the longer term objective was to build a complementary carcassing line,” said Mr Ainslie. “Given the scale of mill planned, we were keen to avoid any delays in bringing the additional volume of finished product to market and the decision was made to invest in, and establish the additional facilities and infrastructure before the design and configuration of the new Lockerbie 3 mill was even committed to paper.”

The result was Lockerbie 2, a £6.5m secondary processing facility complete with state-of-the-art technology including kilns, X-ray strength grading, in-line moisture measurement, high-speed planing, cross-cutting, treatment and packaging – “basically handling all the potential outputs of the mill we were about to build”.

“At that point we stopped that type of operation at Dumfries which became a feeder mill for Lockerbie 2 while we designed and built Lockerbie 3,” said Mr Ainslie.

Investment really stepped up a gear when construction started on Lockerbie 3 in September 2008. A cool £22.5m was the price ticket for the Soderhamn Erikson main saw-line (the biggest order the Swedish company had received), plus all the associated technology and equipment (see factfile below).

October start-up

When the line fires up next month, the 4,000m² footprint Lockerbie 3 will be one of the largest and most advanced wood processing facilities in Europe.

The plan is for an initial single shift capacity of 140,000m³ – replacing Dumfries’s output of 65,000m³ and adding an extra 75,000m³ – and the company anticipates achieving this target pretty swiftly.

“We operate our mills on a 12-hour hot-seating basis, so rather than working two shifts, running eight hours, letting the machines get cold, then putting on a night shift and doing another eight, we do 12 hours non-stop.

“Ultimately we’re looking at a site usage of roundwood well in excess of 500,000m³ – 200,000m³ from Lockerbie 1, plus up to 300,000m³ from Lockerbie 3.

“The new mill harnesses existing technology,” he added. “Each element of the new mill incorporates ideas which have been tried and tested in previous developments, including our own; it’s our arrangement and lay-out of them that’s unique.”

It’s this carefully thought out design that will mitigate the current lacklustre state of the carcassing market. One of the reasons for the “slight delay” in Lockerbie 3 making the leap from drawing board to reality was to maximise its flexibility.

“Everybody who builds one says they have the most flexible sawmill, but we genuinely believe we do,” said Mr Ainslie. “Yes, it’s primarily a carcassing mill, but it’s sufficiently flexible to produce a range of specifications including: fencing, heavy sections, packaging and an element of pallet material.

“The big difference is that we’ve put extra investment in in terms of elements such as horizontal saws and cross-cuts on the stackers, so we can put in very large logs and output, say, 2.4, 3×3 fence posts as finished product. Most other mills would have to extract this from the line and send it off to another unit, either to be re-sawn or cross-cut, or both.”

Flexibility

It’s an MO that has set the company in good stead in mills throughout the group. “All the lessons in terms of flexibility have come from earlier development projects,” said Mr Ainslie. For example, Lockerbie 1 features a reintroduction system entering from one side. “It enables us to bring in long boards from elsewhere to be cut on Lockerbie 1’s cross-cut. Utilisation to this degree is relatively straightforward but can involve significant additional cost if not factored in at the outset.”

Lockerbie 1 also has a separate multi-head Stenner line, known colloquially as the “DIY line” because it caters for the shed market by cutting mini-bundles and quarter packs.

Lockerbie 3 will offer a similar level of “bespoke” processing. “The output will be engineered so that it’s what the customer wants, rather than just trying to sell the customer what we produce,” said Mr Ainslie. “For example, the line features a centre saw at the end which will cut lengths horizontally. So if a customer wants 47×75 rather than 47×150 it will cut through the horizontal plane. This is a real improvement on having to take it off the line and put it through a re-saw.

“We’re going to have lots of options for each log, depending on which section of the market is busy – there won’t be a log we can’t process at Lockerbie 3.”

Sawing options

The heart of the new sawmill, the Soderhamn Erikson line, will operate at a speed of 140m/min for smaller diameter logs (down to 18mm – anything smaller will go to Lockerbie 1) and 50m/min for larger diameter (up to 700mm). The differing capabilities of the small log line in Lockerbie 1 and the larger saw line at Lockerbie 3 mean the company has the ability to process the complete range of log specifications in-house and within the same site. This allows “the extra tweaks like cutting a piece horizontally at the end of the run, or cross-cutting to customer specification”.

James Jones has reason to be optimistic about the future. “The overall market is quiet but within that we are very busy. We’ve seen a dramatic increase in demand because of the lack of material coming in – particularly Swedish material. There’s a lot of genuine interest in Lockerbie 3 before it even comes on stream and that’s right across the board from pallets, packing and fencing, to KD construction and agricultural purlins.”