It should come as no surprise to anyone working within the forestry and timber products sectors to hear that they are part of a multi-million pound industry.

In fact the Office of National Statistics (ONS) values the timber supply chain, including forestry, at more than £7.6bn and ranks it high in the list after leading industries like motor vehicles, printing and publishing and pharmaceuticals – and ahead of bread and biscuits, iron and steel, and alcoholic beverages, with tobacco products way down the rankings.

The timber supply chain is also one of the UK’s most complex and wide-ranging, encompassing as it does a variety of processing operations and end uses, from building and furniture making, to packaging and logistics.

The Timber Trade Federation‘s own review of the industry’s activities during 2005 was “designed to provide a summary of the main facts and figures and, additionally, to demonstrate that the sum of the many different activities that comprise the timber industry in the UK, combine to make it an important part of people’s lives”. It also highlights the enormous scale of the industry.

“This annual summary is designed to demonstrate just how significant our industry is,” said John White, the TTF’s chief executive. “Not just in terms of size but also in terms of the variety of timber and sheet materials that are consumed in the UK.”

The review focused on the point at which timber moves from the UK sawmills and importers through into processing, merchanting and distribution operations. It discovered that at this entry point of the supply chain, consumption of timber and panels was valued at £2.4bn, with volumes reaching around 17.1 million m3.

From these totals, the TTF interpolated figures showing the breakdown of the total UK consumption of sawn timber and panel products – the former (softwood and hardwood combined) amounted to just under 10.7 million m3, while panel products accounted for 6.4 million m3 of consumption.

Product breakdowns

To crunch those numbers still further, the UK’s consumption of softwood was 9,998,000m3 (valued at £1,221m), hardwood was 699,000m3 (£204m), plywood 1,333,000m3 (£315m), particleboard 3,184,000m3 (£370m), OSB 459,000m3 (£39m), fibreboard (such as hardboard and softboard) 256,000m3 (£98m) and MDF 1,141,000m3 (£191m).

Softwood remains the wood product most in demand in the UK, accounting for 50% of the value and 58% of the volume of consumption in 2005. Hardwood accounted for 8% of the value and 4% of the volume.

The volume of UK-produced sawn softwood output has increased steadily over the last 10 years (to 2,782,000m3) as sawmills continue to invest in production capacity, not only to increase domestic consumption, but also to open up export markets. In fact, softwood is the UK’s largest exported timber product (343,000m3 were exported in 2005 against 143,000m3 from the next largest, MDF).

Conversely, output of sawn hardwood from UK mills has reduced (to 54,000m3) although it remains a higher value product.

UK particleboard and OSB production has remained high at 2,276,000m3 and 281,000m3 respectively, while MDF production has remained stable at around 841,000m3.

Exports

The UK’s exports of timber products have grown over the past few years and now approach the one million m3 mark, with the Republic of Ireland being a major customer and a proportion of the volume being re-exports, notably of plywood and other fibreboards.

However, the UK is still one of the world’s largest importers of timber and panels with 68% of its total consumption, by volume, being supplied by overseas sources. Europe collectively supplies 57.9% of the UK’s demand by value, with Asia accounting for 5.4%, Africa 1.3%, North America 4.3%, Central and South America 4.1% and Oceania 0.1%.

Of imported goods, volumes of imported softwood are way out in front at 7,559,000m3, while the relatively high volume of hardwood imported (660,000m3) compared to the consumption of UK-grown hardwoods is indicative of the range of species available from around the globe.

In the panels sector, plywood markets remained strong in 2005 and demand for imported OSB continued to grow. Imported particleboard and MDF suffered the same problems as their UK-produced counterparts with lower demand from consuming markets, while imports of other fibreboards fell slightly in 2005.

  • Further details and statistics can be found at www.ttf.co.uk /industry/statistics