Sawdust and woodshaving merchants are pushing for roundtable talks with the 70-80 top mills in the UK to hammer out a price accord designed to safeguard the future of the UK residue industry.
The National Association of Woodshaving and Sawdust Merchants and Contractors is pressing for the talks because it says prices were ‘roller-coasting’ and fuelling demand for imports and manufactured shavings.
NAWSMAC secretary-general Colin Grimes claimed that during periods of low residue supply some mills looked to obtain as much as £60 per tonne, but that their expectations could sink to lower than £10 per tonne during periods of more plentiful supply.
Mr Grimes said: ‘Prices up to £60 a tonne are unsustainable and the result is that we are getting more imports from Canada, Scandinavia and eastern Europe and more manufactured shavings.
‘It is time that we all sat down together and took a long-term view. We need to establish a strategy that will set down contracts that allow for more fixed prices over say two to three years. The market strategy would need to be in both parties’ interests – the mills and the residue merchants.’
NAWSMAC fears that sawmills’ residue income could dry up if such an accord is not hammered out.
‘Many mills rely on this income for their bottom-line survival, it is a very significant part of their trading. If we cannot pass on all the waste to customers because of imports and manufactured alternatives it will mean that mills will actually have to pay to have the residue removed to landfill sites.’
One of the UK’s leading suppliers of residue products, the Snowflake Group, believes that more stable prices would be in the interest of mills as well as residue merchants.
Paul Martin, managing director of Snowflake’s woodshavings division, said: ‘The highs and lows are really in no-one’s interest.’
