This week I really feel we’re starting to get into the Christmas spirit. This owes little to the diminutive tree balanced precariously on my computer and rather more to the spate of festive lunches and dinners the TTJ team is attending this week (it’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it).
My Christmas wish list includes, somewhat unrealistically, an item featured on page 14. A gleaming new S-type Jag would look extremely tasty outside my house on the morning of the 25th, but, unless anyone out there has any other plans, I guess I’ll be sticking with my four year old Ford.
Quite apart from appealing to the more materialistic side of my nature, the feature does remind us that timber is used in some of the most high profile applications imaginable. And, for Jaguar at least, the wood mills are an integral part of the business – a workforce of 260 with the potential to rise to 450 is not to be sniffed at and neither is the company’s multi-million pound investment in its wood processing operation.
Less glamorous, but equally important in the scheme of things, are the thousands of trucks and vans slogging up and down the country. As our supplement shows, timber – sometimes even the bulletproof variety – is also very much on the agendas of manufacturers of commercial vehicles.
‘Off road’, timber has also recently shown its strength at Scotbuild, where engineered structural timber was a recurring theme. However, the TBIC sounds a cautionary note on the potential of ‘cowboy’ timber frame operators to scupper the sector’s prospects.
Speaking of structural timber, the TTF held a meeting of members last week to ‘lay to rest the confusion’ relating to certain types of structural plywood. Hopefully it’ll do the trick, but, call me sceptical, I reckon the chances of that happening are about as likely as my waking up to a tinsel-festooned S-type on Christmas Day.
