Only Ever British Timber

CONSTANT FIREWOOD PRICE INCREASES AND THE SWITCH FROM HARDWOOD TO SOFTWOOD - WHATS GOING ON?

In the last 12 to 18 months the firewood industry has experienced massive turbulance, unfortunately England has a very poor tree cover contary to what most people think compared to countries such as Germany, France, slovakia etc, as a nation we rely on imported timber for over 80% of our yearly usage. In the post covid era shipping rates rocketed causing many companies who would usually import Logs to look to British sourced timber.

RUSSIA INVASION OF UKRAINE

Construction grade timber, biomass, and lumber (paper), have all previously been heavily exported out of Russia.
Obviously, with the Russian war on Ukraine, these exports have stopped, creating a big hole and alternate routes have been found to replace this supply. There is now a large demand in the Baltic states for these products, which is where a huge amount of firewood sold in the UK is sourced from

DEMAND FOR FIREWOOD

To make the situation worse - the demand for firewood has increased massively here in Britain as millions of new consumers had stoves fitted and entered the market place in 2022 in search of alternative heat and energy amid the energy crisis.

SUMMARY

In a nut shell the demand for Firewood has increased massively at a time when availability and demand of the raw material was already at breaking point.

SHIFT TO SOFTWOOD

Over the years there has been a stuburn resistance from the uk consumers to move over to softwoods and probably not enough effort on the part of the suppliers to encourage the switch despite a clear knowledge within the industry that the Hardwood supplies where simply not available to meet the demand long term of both the domestic and bio mass energy sector, the reality is that softwood is perfectly fine for burning, it tends to burn quicker but burns as hot if not hotter and reaches temperature fast, in the Nordic and Baltic countries this is all they burn, infact they view Hardwood as being a fussy fuel thats hard to light, slow to heat a room and better suited to making furniture.

LARCH AKA SUPER SOFTWOOD

Larch is sometimes called a super softwood within the forestry industry, Larch is actually denser and has a higher calorific value than many Hardwoods, we have tested Larch many times on our own fires for burn time and temperature and it is on par with all the white Hardwoods such as Ash and sycamore and much better in our opinion than Silver Birch. Softwood is not going to be a magic pill answer to the current firewood price situation as this has also risen in value massively (Softwood is currently making the same money in the woods as Ash and Oak was making 18 months ago) it will however help bring your current Firewoood bill down and pound for pound if you compare burn time to cost it works out more cost effective than Hardwood