If you can’t say anything nice, we were told as cantankerous kids, don’t say anything at all. Some might say that’s advice which would be well-directed towards UK newspaper editors, given the level of breast-beating ‘are we headed for recession?’ prognostication they’re indulging in. The danger is that we could talk ourselves into trouble – and that’s not just the preserve of the media.
An equally risky strategy is to skip along pretending everything in the garden is wonderful, which means being unprepared if that belt-tightening moment does arrive.
It may not be the stuff of banner headlines, but clearly the best approach is balanced reporting of the economic and commercial facts and, hopefully, that’s something we’ve achieved this week. The consensus from our straw poll is that we may be headed for slower growth, but not full-blown recession, a view that is shared by the latest Construction Products Association report.
Taking a wider perspective, several international forestry players report lower second quarter earnings. But others managed to increase profits over the previous year.
Of course, you should always take what a politician says with a pinch of spin, but the chancellor’s view that, after several years of growth and rising investment UK industry is better placed to weather a slowdown, also makes sense. And the CPA reports that capital spending in the construction products sector is continuing.
An interesting remark for the industry’s medium to long-term prospects was also made to TTJ last week by Weinig managing director Wolfgang Wilmsen. In recent years, he maintained, UK small-to medium-sized firms have caught up with Continental counterparts in terms of the scale, sophistication and, of course, price of machinery they install. This, he said, showed a confident timber sector equipping itself for the future.
