Two timber businesses have outlined the need for an increase in home-grown timber planting and wood product use to the government’s Advisory Panel on Forestry.
Representatives from Coleford-based Woodgate Sawmills Ltd and Cinderford-based Forest Products Ltd met the panel, appointed in the wake of the government scrapping its public forests sell-off plan, in its first fact-finding visit to the Forest of Dean.
The panel is to make recommendations on English forestry policy and advise the government on the role of the Forestry Commission in implementing policy.
The UK Forest Products Association (UKFPA) had recommended the panel visited Woodgate Sawmills as an excellent example of a sawmilling business which relies on commercial forestry operations for its raw materials.
Ken Humphries, Woodgate managing director, criticised Forestry Commission policy relating to hardwood planting ratios, which in the Forest of Dean have reached 60% native broadleaves to 40% conifers. If continued, he said this policy could see the demise of the forest products industry which relies on conifer species.
“We should endeavour to further reduce our reliance on imported wood and wood products,” added John Freeman, managing director of Forest Products Ltd.
UKFPA executive director David Sulman said he felt it had been vitally important that panel members had the opportunity to see a modern sawmilling business in the Forest of Dean, especially as the UKFPA had been omitted from panel membership.
“The message is clear,” he said. “We urgently need more trees of the right type, in the right places, and we need to be using more timber and wood products.”
The panel, led by the Bishop of Liverpool, is to conduct further visits – to Kielder Forest, the Egger plant at Hexham and small woods in Kent. It will submit its interim report to ministers in November and a final report next April.
