Increased demand for home-grown construction wood and biomass has helped boost timber sales at DWP Harvesting to £1.1m in 2011.
DWP, an independent Scottish forest owners co-operative based on Deeside, Aberdeenshire, said it achieved a major increase in volumes handled during 2011.
DWP director Andrew Nicol said despite the recession there was firm demand for home-grown timber for the construction industry, along with a growing market for wood fibre to generate renewable heat.
He said UK sawmilling investment, combined with the weakness of sterling against the euro, had enabled the home-grown sector to succeed in doubling its market share of UK timber from 20% to 40%.
But he said as Scottish roundwood supplies tightened, there was concern at the effect that large-scale biomass-fuelled electricity stations could have on the established wood using industry’s wood fibre intake.
He advocated smaller, local biomass power facilities generating heat instead, such as the Hill of Banchory Energy Services Company’s new biomass-fired energy centre, which DWP members recently toured to celebrate the co-operative 25th anniversary.
The energy centre will shortly be commissioned to heat more than 600 homes, a leisure centre and light industrial units, fuelled by woodchips from Cordiners Sawmills Ltd, which is supplied with timber from DWP.
Mr Nichol welcomed increasing recognition of the important role of timber co-operatives in securing wood fibre supplies from the private and voluntary sectors.
“Working together and with the expertise in members’ bioenergy businesses, DWP is achieving far more than any forest owner could do on their own,” he said.
DWP encompasses 36 forest owners in the north and northeast of Scotland and currently has 9,000ha under its management, producing around 25,000 tonnes of wood products a year.
