Long established timber merchants Linnell Bros Ltd, founded in 1880 by Arthur Linnell, has invested more than £1m in the last 18 months, including in two new high-pressure timber treatment plants.

The Northampton-based business, now in the hands of the family’s fourth generation, supplies both domestic and commercial timber solutions in building, landscaping, agricultural, fencing, transport and engineering projects around the country. Recent contracts include supplying treated timber for Woburn Safari Park, Heathrow Terminal Five, the Crown Estates in Windsor and the neighbouring Silverstone Racetrack.

“We needed greater preservative treatment capacity and the new plants have doubled the volume of timber we can treat,” said John Linnell.

“In addition to the large projects we regularly supply, we also service a strong fencing market. New technologies from Lonza give us not just increased capacity, but support in the accurate specification for treatment.

“Our investment brings us right up-to-date with the new Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) regulations. This reinforces our aim of best practice across the business and ensuring we work to the very highest standards.” The two new timber treatment plants are housed under cover on-site.

Tweddle Engineering supplied the plants with fully automated, tilting vessels and transfer systems.

“The treated timbers come out much drier, we recover more preservative solution and after each treatment we are ready to go again straight away.”

The new building also features rain water reclamation of around 100,000 litres a month, feeding into the company’s 300,000 litre capacity water storage, all but negating their need for mains supply for the site.

The vacuum pressure treatment is offered with a green or brown finish, and utilises Lonza Wood Protection’s TANALITH wood preservative.

Linnell Bros’s timber treatment plants are controlled and managed by Lonza’s Auto- Treater software

“Auto-Treater provides reliable and extremely accurate process control together with an intuitive management reporting function,” said Lonza Wood Protection’s marketing director Andy Hodge.

“It was very important to us to make it both easy to learn and easy to use. Incorporated into brand new plant design such as that at Linnell Bros, or retro-fitted to existing operations, Auto-Treater provides outstanding benefits and reassurance.”

“It saves time and money and provides our treatment operators with an overall easier to use, more efficient and safer control system,” added Mr Linnell.

“We get exactly the right specification for each treatment and from the system’s reports the figures are monitored very precisely in Kg rather than an approximate percentage. The paper trail for timber treatment is very important and Auto-Treater is a great system to manage and monitor the process.”

Mr Hodge said Lonza’s design engineers were constantly developing new treatment plant features and innovations to meet the changing requirements of the market and industry regulations.

“Typical recent developments include superior performance pump systems to help ensure the shortest possible vacuum, fill and empty times,” he added.

Linnell Bros machines and processes timber on-site in the company’s comprehensively equipped workshop, offering a complete range of timber products such as flooring, traditionally hand-crafted gates and decking as well as undertaking bespoke design and manufacture. It stocks large volumes of homegrown and imported timber on its 15-acre site.

Other investments have included an 8,000ft2 trade and retail centre built in 2013 to meet every need of the working professional and home improvement enthusiast.

On nearby land owned by the company, they have also obtained special planning permission for an 8,000ft2 timber Eco-House. This self-build project has been co-ordinated by land agent Howkins & Harrison and the land, planning permission and plans will go on the market in May.

The designs for this innovative timber house incorporate impressive features such as cedar roofing shingles and glulam beams. “It’s a rare place, and it will make a special home,” said Mr Linnell.

In July this year, the company will develop a further acre of ground space with a 30,000ft2 dry store, creating space for more machining workshops and timber products, and more expansion is on the way.

“With the quality and capacity for treated timber we now have, we are on track to really push the business forward,” said Mr Linnell.