Long established family sawmilling company A&J Scott was one of those timber industry businesses that kept operating right through the Covid-19 lockdown period.
Based in Alnwick, Northumberland and with an extensive product range that is heavily focused on fencing components, landscaping and garden products, the company has experienced huge demand recently.
Significant investment in technology – an automatic value-added product line from Kallfass – has helped service the demand during this unique period.
“We managed to keep working two shifts right though the whole period, including the initial two to three week lockdown period when it appeared quite bleak for many people,” said Robert Scott, managing director of A&J Scott.
“We only dropped two shifts in total when we had a bit of self-isolation.”
The sawmill ran at about 75% for a couple of weeks initially and was then up to normal speed.
“In the main it has been good. The fencing and landscaping sector has been very busy, so I feel we have capitalised on it as best as we could. The demand has been insatiable since April and we have been struggling to keep people satisfied with timber.
“It’s been a perfect storm, you had a lot of people sitting at home on 80% pay, mortgage holidays, not having to work but they can’t go anywhere, they can’t go to the pub, there is no sport on and they’re sitting looking at the fence that probably blew down in February. They’ve all taken the decision to invest in the garden, which is great.”
The decision of some other mills to shut for a period also opened the door to new customer conversations for A&J Scott. “We have a far greater customer base than we did prior to this episode. So, it’s been a difficult but overall positive experience.”
Investment with Kallfass
A&J Scott has a primary sawmill line (hybrid of Soderhamn Eriksson and Brodbaek technology) for cutting small to mediumsized logs and another line (EWD) for cutting the oversized logs.
The new Kallfass line installed in May, 2019 is focused on secondary processing. “We had quite a sprawling, manually operated secondary processing department, which over the years had grown arms and legs and consisted of lots of small machines across the site,” said Mr Scott.
“We wanted to consolidate it and upgrade the machinery in the process. Essentially the aim was to increase the volume of wood processed per hour per person – which we have done with the Kallfass line. We have also improved health and safety / environmental provisions and future-proofed secondary processing/value-adding for the next 10-20 years.”
Conversations started between A&J Scott and Kallfass three years ago and included some visits to Kallfass customers in Germany and Holland, as well as several visits to Alnwick to find a solution to automate the mill’s secondary production processes.
“We looked at what was available in the market,” said Mr Scott. “We deemed the Kallfass solution and the equipment to be the best and chose them as our supplier and further developed the project with them.” A&J Scott had not previously worked with Kallfass as a technology provider – Kallfass was the turnkey technology partner for the project.
“We designed the line, integrated the different machinery and also installed the complete line in the building,” said Matthias Link, Kallfass sales manager.
Kallfass technology included cross-cutting, strapping, pointing, round-topping, stacking and destacking. It also integrated an existing resaw, a new Rex planer, Mosca minibundling and a Fromm bundling system.
The cost of the entire project was in the region of £4m and installation took about six months.
All work steps for the manufacturing of fencing products are now integrated in one fully automated production line in a confined space.
The line process starts with a forklift truck feeding the line with raw material ranging from 800-4900mm in length, 75-250mm in width and 16-200mm in thickness.
This is followed by destacking, crosscutting to length, post pointing, radius trimming of fence boards, resawing of single parts/cants, resawing of small packs, horizontal resawing, singling out and planing, mini bundling and multiple crosscutting and stacking/strapping.
“We have an extensive range of everything from a 450mm 50x50mm peg, which is four-way pointed to a piece of decking and everything in between – panel battens, featheredge boards, panel cappings,” added Mr Scott.
“Everything we produced up until the installation of the Kallfass line we did on smaller machines, so the idea was to consolidate, take out those smaller machines, upgrade and also build in some extra capacity as well.”
New Line Features
One of the biggest advances for A&J Scott has been the revolution of its post pointing operations.
“We expanded into the highways post and rail market, not long before we commissioned the line,” explained Mr Scott.
“That market involves a lot of post pointing. Previously, we had a man working full time, overtime, all sorts of hours just to keep up with doing it all manually. Now we can comfortably cope with the level of demand within normal hours in a fraction of the time using the Kallfass line.
“We’ve gone from doing one to two posts per minute at the very most to doing 10-12 a minute, so it’s a huge uplift in productivity. It has revolutionised that product operation.” Kallfass designed a fully automated post pointing machine with four motors for pointing posts with a biggest section of 200 x 200mm.
Mr Link highlighted the haunching machine for profiling fence boards as another important feature.
“In this line Kallfass shows the ability we have to build up the whole process of fencing and post pointing in a line. There is not another line which includes so many functions as this one. It was not easy to design it, but in the end it is really impressive.
“In this line, the post pointing, haunching and feeding the planer were important, as well as integrating the existing resaw,” said Mr Link.
“In conjunction with other parts of the line, the post pointing can offer a very flexible, very versatile, very extensive product offering,” added Mr Scott.
“In the line we can post point, incise, bundle and stack and cross-cut. We can do everything, it’s a bit like a Swiss army knife!”
Increasing Feed Speeds
Mr Scott said producing the featheredge boards in the resaw and then stacking them as a pack afterwards in the stacker was a highlight and had increased feed speeds.
“The stacking and destacking functions are integrated so it’s fully automatic. We now have end-to-end production whereas previously we had to have a slight wait.” Mini-bundling is another interesting feature of the line, giving A&J Scott the ability to build mini-bundles as part of a larger pack.
“Mini-bundles has been something the company has been asked for over the years, so it’s something we wanted to build into the line. This helps with the DIY chain business.
“Bundling 8-10 featheredge boards together in mini-bundles keeps the quality of the product better, so if it takes a while to finish the pack off, you don’t get that horrible banana-shaped featheredge board that you get when it sits in the sun.
“The DIY market isn’t a huge market for us, it’s something we dip into and out of, but it’s always nice to be able to do it.”
Increased Productivity
A&J Scott ran the new line on a double shift in April and again in July.
“Because the new line requires so few people to operate it, we now have the ability to easily increase the shifts without taking on lots of people,” said Mr Scott.
“Essentially we can double the throughput for a short period of time very easily.
Operationally it’s far easier to turn up and turn down, so it has allowed us to capitalise on the market and help internal pressure with customer demand and backlogs.
“That’s given us something we didn’t have before because, previously, to double shift a department required an extra 25-30 people, which isn’t easy,” continued Mr Scott.
“It is far more efficient and we are getting a lot more cubic metres per head, per hour, per day than we were previously. We are processing about 600m3 of value-added products a week now and we could easily double that if we wanted to.”
Mr Link said the UK fencing market was very big and very specific in terms of its requirements.
“This installation gives A&J Scott the ability to produce everything automatically and that is the unique feature of this installation,” he said.
Mr Scott agreed, adding that there are fencing lines in the UK that destack and stack automatically but none that have as many features.
“They may only be for featheredge or for battens or grading but there’s nothing that does everything,” he said.
Kallfass is working with other UK and Ireland sawmillers and it is currently installing a line at Murray Timber. Other installations include at Glennon Brothers, James Jones & Sons, Ransfords, BSW Timber and Thomson.
“At the moment the market is really good and we have a long delivery time,” said Mr Link.
For A&J Scott, further operational tweaks will be made to the new line in the coming months.
While business has been very good in 2020, Mr Scott is mindful that Q4 and early next year may be more challenging.
“As a company and as an industry we need to be aware of what’s coming around the corner. When you look at the job loss numbers in the UK it can’t be good in the medium term.”
However, having invested in a flexible, automated value-added line, A&J Scott seems ready to deal with future challenges and market opportunities.
