I knew the timber trade could be enthusiastic about its product, but I didn’t realise quite how enthusiastic until I was turning blue in the freezing fog on Southend pier last week.
I’d met Willamette Europe director Geoff Rhodes in the town and he suggested we brave the bitter cold to visit the timber-decked tourist attraction. One reason was that Willamette has contributed to the ‘sponsor a plank’ restoration fund for the Victorian edifice. But Geoff was also intent on extolling it as a peerless example of timber’s incredible staying power. It’s a mile and a half long – although on this day all but 50 yards was shrouded in murk – and many of the deck’s tens of thousands of boards have survived since the 19th century.
While it didn’t do anything for my head cold, this is just the sort of energetic advocacy for timber that the Wood for Good campaign has to tap into in order to ‘pull through’ its already successful ‘above the line’ consumer, architectural and building press advertising. There had been the odd comment that the campaign so far had not connected sufficiently with its ‘stakeholders’ in the trade. But this effort is now being stepped up, with the launch of a regular Wood for Good newsletter and a new series of posters (p3).
The aim of the campaign is to make timber more highly valued for its technical and environmental qualities. Ultimately the trade must hope that it makes it more value-added too. Thankfully importer and merchant Cox Long seems to have survived (p4). But that such a stalwart of the business, which is about the same age as Southend Pier, needed to call in the administrators highlighted that price pressures and margins are still among the key issues the trade has to address.
And if you too want to go down in posterity as a pier plank sponsor, call the restoration fund on 01702 215620.
