The Wood Protection Association’s (WPA) annual conference is growing in stature, attracting more delegates each year. In fact, this year a venue change was required in order to accommodate the 85 delegates from across the supply chain.

The April 11 conference at the Marriot Forest of Arden hotel near Birmingham featured a packed programme and kicked off with a presentation by Timber Trade Federation (TTF) managing director David Hopkins, who highlighted some of the TTF’s action plans this year. These include a focus on the panels sector but also on the treatments sector, which will see strong collaboration between the TTF and WPA this year.

Mr Hopkins said that the conundrum that buyers of timber products face is that while they may look the same, they can perform very differently, spreading ambiguity across the market. It was important, he added to keep reinforcing the TTF’s mantra of ‘Timber you can trust’ and that its position in the middle of the supply chain “spider’s web” meant that it was well placed to do so.

A TTF survey of merchants had revealed that preservative treated wood is a mainstay of their offering and that, in some cases, legal claims were being made against them when timber purporting to be treated suffered early failure.

The survey results defined three clear priorities and action plans for the TTF in the context of timber treatments. These were:

  • To ensure that preservative treated wood is being accurately and unambiguously specified/purchased as fit for intended purpose by way of a buyers’ guide, importer/merchant/supplier collaboration; press coverage/merchant forums; and training and education.
  • That customers purchasing treated products from TTF members are provided with adequate information and, where appropriate, training to be able to use and install these products safely and effectively by way of improving sources of information; training and education; and partnership.
  • That preservative treated wood is being produced by or purchased directly or indirectly from a treatment provider whose operations have been assessed and approved under an independent and reputable accreditation scheme by way of compliance options; and the (voluntary) WPA Benchmark scheme.

These actions will be drafted as Code of Conduct requirements for TTF members and ratified at the AGM on June 26, said Mr Hopkins, adding that “buy-in” from members had been really good.

“Like everything, you have to work hard in the supply chain to get the buy-in to be able to prove the claims you make,” said Mr Hopkins. “We realise there will be costs involved with testing and so on, but the benefits will outweigh these.”

He added that he wanted to ensure that collaboration is continuous.

“Regulations will change and will only make things tighter. The ambiguity is huge and the opportunity to sell the wrong product [for the end use] is huge. I was staggered to find that builders sometimes buy timber with no purchase order, so there are no details on how and why it is being used. This opens both the builder and the merchant to claims against them if the timber fails. We want to put an end to selling timber for no [stated] specific purpose.”

WPA chief executive Gordon Ewbank expanded on the collaboration with the TTF, which, he said, enabled the message to penetrate the whole producer, merchant and distributor network.

“The question is, do we really understand the supply chain and our place in it?” he said. “The supply chain is complicated – merchants stock UK and imported timber, treated and untreated – who aren’t we communicating with? Educating the merchant and the supply chain isn’t going to be easy but we need to get this right, from the top down.”

Mr Ewbank added that the three key strategies of the WPA/TTF alliance are to build influence through collaboration to help protect and develop the wood protection market; to build confidence in the efficacy of members’ products and processes through independent assessment/accreditation; and to build competence and product knowledge in specifiers, users and regulators.

“The WPA has always been grounded in home-grown timber,” said Mr Ewbank. “The TTF collaboration enables us to engage with the overseas supply chain.”

To this end, he said, the WPA and TTF had produced a joint guidance document demonstrating how the British standard BS 8417 dovetailed with those of the Nordic Wood Preservation Council (NTR).

“There is no point in us talking to our side in the supply chain if we’re not also talking to the Swedes,” he said.

Mr Ewbank also spoke about the need to educate specifiers, referring to a recent comment from an architect about the need to eliminate CCA and replace it with boron.

“This level misunderstanding and ignorance from people who are supposed to be trendsetters is disheartening – but it is also an opportunity, so we have to keep plugging away,” he said.

He added that architects, quantity surveyors, specifiers and commercial directors had been questioned in a survey on their understanding of ‘active fire protection’, ‘passive fire protection’, ‘reaction to fire’ and ‘fire resistance’ and that results had shown a shocking lack of knowledge.

“If they don’t understand these definitions, how can they specify the correct product?” he said.

In terms of fire protection, Mr Ewbank said the Fire Protection Association (FPA), which supports a total ban on combustible materials, is motivated by the insurance sector and he sees its drive of protecting the asset – the building itself – as far more of a threat to timber than building regs, which seek to protect the occupants.

He added that the WPA has meetings lined up with the FPA and that it is also working with the Confederation of Timber Industries on specifier education. It is also working with the Local Authority Building Control and Wood Campus on training standards and on tightening of the Benchmark approval criteria for FR systems, treaters and suppliers.

Other activities include updating the WPA manuals (available free) and the launch of user fact sheets. The WPA website is also being updated.

The conference also included a presentation from BRE director (research) Ed Suttie on the role of wood in healthy buildings – a subject he also covered at the TTJ Wood and Wellness conference in February.

Dr Suttie said there are many exemplar timber-rich buildings in the UK but no mention is made of the positive well-being impacts of timber in the case studies.

“We need to go back to those people and encourage them to look at that,” he said.

Dr Suttie also noted the “aversion” to all chemicals, despite the fact that we are all made up of chemicals ourselves and, he added, naturally occurring VOCs can have a positive impact on people.

“For example, Himalayan alder increases blood oxygen saturation while decreasing blood pressure and heart rate,” he said.

He added that studies of preservative pretreated timber in the context of indoor quality were rare because “it’s not in your face” but that evidence suggests that emissions are negligible and the pathway between the timber element and the indoor space is very convoluted.

The final presentation was delivered by Elisabeth Piveteau and Vincent Marlin of PiveteauBois, who spoke on the company’s preservative-treated Hexapli cross-laminated timber (CLT). The company had won the WPA Innovation award for this product the previous evening.

PiveteauBois has two sawmills in France and one in Poland and processes around 800,000m3 of timber per year, said Ms Piveteau. Construction accounts for 60% of production (landscaping products and pellets make up the balance) and this has developed on the back of treated timber and educating customers on the value of using timber treated to a certain Use Class in outdoor applications.

“It is in our own interests to get customers to specify the correct timber,” she said, adding that, in France, the company’s Durapain brand is synonymous with UC4 timber, in much the same way as Hoover has become the generic word for vacuum cleaners.

PiveteauBois’s CLT factory began production last September, following a €15m investment. Capacity is currently 50,000m3 per year, with the potential to double that.

“We feel there’s a market for CLT and we also believe the future is wood,” said Ms Piveteau. “It is the only sustainable material in the world – this is why we invest in it.”

Mr Marlin explained that French building regulations state that all structural timber components must be resistant against wood boring insects but said that it wasn’t always easy for designers and builders to determine the correct Use Class for their project.

He highlighted the case of a CLT project in France in 2016 where water ingress had led to the CLT panels swelling by 4%, the formation of cracks and fissures, the moisture content rising from 22% to 40%, biological attacks, water pooling and draining problems. As a consequence of this the building programme had been halted.

“Bringing dry CLT into the project at the outset is not sufficient, it has to be kept dry,” said Mr Marlin. “You have to make sure that CLT is lower than 20% mc at the outset because it doesn’t have the same capacity for ventilation as other timber components.”

He added that Hexapli is treated with a UC2 water repellent after machining but before assembling. The treatment is currently applied by brush in the factory but spray application is in development.