It may not have been the best of summers but everything in the garden is blooming for wood and woodcare products. In the year to April, sales of wooden garden furniture were up 32% as the trend away from plastic continues, and fencing sales rose by 19%. The Leisure and Outdoor Furniture Association (LOFA) says that 57% of garden benches owned today are hardwood and at GLEE this week, 80-85% of garden furniture on display will be made from wood, with the emphasis on Forest Stewardship Council accreditation.
LOFA says that 84% of the UK population now owns garden furniture – compared with 54% in 1988. With purchases made every three or four years, many of the sales are repeat purchases or people trading up, which is good news for wood.
“The trend is towards trading up to wood, to quality, comfort and aesthetic appeal, as well as durability and easy maintenance,” says LOFA.
Sales of garden woodcare are also booming, accounting for 27% of the £200m woodcare market. Garden woodcare is also the fastest growing sector in the woodcare market: during January to June this year, garden woodcare sales were up 8% on the same time last year, while the total woodcare market grew by 5%.
“Over the last few years garden woodcare has continued to grow whereas other parts of the woodcare market have been relatively flat,” said Peter Hunt, marketing manager for Cuprinol and Hammerite.
Water-based fence treatments are driving the growth and, with sales of £47m, they are the biggest product group of total woodcare.
And it is Cuprinol’s own Rollable fence treatment, introduced in March, which is its biggest selling woodcare product.
“It’s been phenomenally successful,” said Mr Hunt. “It’s brought more consumers into the market because it is quick. The whole point of the product is that it goes on twice as quickly as a brush.”
The product is sold at a premium but Mr Hunt said it is worth it when “most people are looking to save time to do other, more interesting things”.
The product’s success is even more surprising when Cuprinol estimates that only one in three fence panels is finished with a woodcare product.
“It’s a double whammy,” said Mr Hunt. “Not only are you growing the market by encouraging more consumers to enter the market, you’re also trading up consumers that were in the market.”
Changing fashions in colour in the garden, away from the uniform brown of 10 years ago, are also attracting new consumers, especially women and younger people.
In terms of timber, there is a shift towards hardwood and this in turn has seen a change in woodcare products: Cuprinol’s sales of teak oil are up 82% on last year.
There has also been a change in timber treatments for garden products. With doubt hanging over the future use of CCA, there is increasing interest in Arch Timber Protection‘s Tanalith E. Marketing manager Janet Brown said: “The adoption rate has increased enormously this year.”
More than 30 treatment plants in the UK have been converted to Tanalith E with “more scheduled for the end of the year”.
Tanalith E treated timber is also available with a built-in water repellent, which is ideal for garden wood products.
In response to concerns and enquiries about CCA, Arch has produced a fact sheet explaining that it “has an excellent track record of safety in use”.
Decking remains a small part of the woodcare market, although it is growing and Mr Hunt believes there is an increasing opportunity to sell on the back of decking.
“Wood is moving, contracting, expanding and it does need protecting,” he said. “Consumers have to understand that they have to look after decking. Most fences are low value and fairly neglected but decking is a higher value product.
“Decking is horizontal and does get quite a battering from the weather and it gets constant traffic. You get puddles forming on the surface so it needs to be more protected than perhaps anything else in the garden.”
This lack of knowledge is something that concerns Paul Kerr, chief executive of the British Association of Landscape Industries, not least because of the poor image it could give to timber.
“People doing DIY decking are not using treated timber. Some products are not suitable, they are badly finished or they are coloured but not treated,” he said. “I would rather see standards increase than corners being cut – the use of a higher grade of timber, properly treated so the industry gets a higher profile of quality.”
He adds that the information provided by DIY stores is not as comprehensive as it could be.
“It’s far safer to use a builder,” he said.
Mr Kerr is also concerned that rather than using oil on teak, consumers are using proprietory wood finishes which will flake.
He also bemoans the use of fashion-driven colours which are often used inappropriately and with “no thought given to the type of wood being used”. The use of colour will continue, he said, but individual shades tend to have short lives.
“Colours are in but I like the natural look and if I’m doing something with a garden I like it to last.”
