In the eighties and early nineties there was a small – but noisy – piece of America in sleepy middle England. Until 1994 the US Air Force was based at the former RAF airbase in Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire and four squadrons of F1-11s were wound up and ready to go at a moment’s notice.
In 2001 the Americans came back – this time armed with nothing more dangerous than a business plan. The company was Boise Building Products Ltd and the mission was to quench the UK housebuilders’ increasing thirst for I-joists.
Central location
Geography was in the site’s favour. It had good road links, with the M40, M4 and M1 all within striking distance and, crucially, its central location put it within a 150-mile radius of 70-80% of all the UK’s housing starts.
The empty hangars, virtually indestructible 40,000ft2 buildings with clear spans and doors at both ends, were ideal for I-joist manufacture and storage and there were acres of land into which the company could expand.
And expansion seems likely given recent growth in the company’s endeavours in engineered wood products (EWP). As Boise Building Product’s managing director Mark Rees described it: “Since entering the market 13 years ago, Boise has become the fastest growing engineered wood manufacturer in the world and is now the second largest after Trus Joist. Our overall sales [Boise Building Products is the UK subsidiary of Boise Cascade Corporation’s Boise Building Solutions division] were up over 30% last year and 33% in the first quarter of this year over the same period in 2003.”
Traditional approach
Boise began in the UK by selling to a wholesale distributor. It was a business model fully in tune with the US parent’s own modus operandi.
“Then we took a step back and spent six months consulting 19 major housebuilders and asking them how they would like to see the EWP business developing,” said Mr Rees. “They wanted to have more direct contact with the manufacturer or system owner who develops the designs, the products and the installation details.”
Dealing direct was a radical departure for Boise’s senior management back in Idaho, but once they saw the business plan they sounded the all-clear.
Boise is luring housebuilders with its Simple Framing System range of EWP which includes BCI joists and Versa-Lam LVL. The BCI joists comprise Versa-Lam flanges bonded to an OSB web.
“Builders haven’t had a chance to analyse the whole cost equation of solid timber versus I-joist,” said Mark Rees. “Now they’re starting to put the whole thing together – remedial costs, installation time, site labour costs and so on.”
Boise Building Products runs two CNC controlled processing lines, capable of cutting and plot packaging over eight miles of EWP per shift. I-joists are cut to plus or minus 2mm sizes and an in-line CNC router cuts service holes in the web to individual customer specification.
The Upper Heyford site carries in excess of £2m in inventory, enabling a response time worthy of its previous F1-11 incumbents and product is delivered straight to site.
Better by design
It’s the design team, safely ensconced behind the reinforced concrete walls of Building 345 that is leading Boise’s campaign. Working directly with the major housebuilders the team provides design, processing and packaging services for many hundreds of different house types, with both national and regional variations.
And there’s not one design team, but two. Boise took a sideways step from direct distribution after being approached by Jewson. “It gave us a way to approach a segment of the market, the small- to medium-sized builders that we wouldn’t have otherwise had,” said sales director Simon Jones.
Work in the Jewson-dedicated office specialises in just-in-time design and delivery for the merchant’s many customers nationwide.
Design innovation
With support supplied under an exclusive arrangement with Dr Luke Whale’s TimberSolve consultancy the design team has developed the innovative I-bloc, a patent-protected end-cap.
Constructed from Versa-Lam, the I-bloc provides a mortar key between the block and the web of the I-joist. The I-bloc is push-fit by hand onto the end of a BCI joist which can then be built straight into external and party walls, creating a quick and safe working platform and removing the need for parallel restraining straps or masonry hangers.
Boise predicts that there is room for I-joist market share to grow to 80% (from about 40% now) within the next three to five years. However, while the sky may be the limit for Boise from its airbase location, competition is likely to remain fierce between the four big I-joist players, Trus Joist, Finnforest, James Jones and itself. “Anyone joining now would have to be very big and brave,” said Mark Rees.
