FSC Friday: It’s been a great summer in the Westcountry

As it is FSC Friday, “the annual celebration of responsible forestry”, Duchy Timber thought we would celebrate by taking stock of the best summer season this company has ever had. In case you are not aware, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an international, non-governmental organisation dedicated to promoting responsible management of the world’s forests. Watch this video to find out more:

Duchy Timber makes an ongoing effort to continuously improve the sustainable sourcing of its saw-logs and imported products. The company is registered with the FSC and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) programmes. As a result, Duchy Timber sources 70% of its timber from registered sustainable woodland.

These efforts in conjunction with campaigns like Grown in Britain ensure that local, national and international sustainability is addressed when you purchase Duchy Timber products.

In the Westcountry it’s hard to forget how lucky we are to live and work in such a beautiful part of the world. Cornwall and Devon share a fantastic countryside.

Of course, it’s not so long ago that we were cursing one of the longest, coldest and wettest winters on record, but wasn't that glorious summer sun worth the wait? We've certainly been busy down at the sawmill this year, supplying more customers with more products to make 2013 our best year to date.

You may remember from earlier blog posts throughout the winter and early spring that we were busy creating a new range of garden furniture to complement the pieces that people already know us for. We didn't tell you the whole story... Whilst designing new garden furniture pieces for the first time for almost a decade, we were busy with an even bigger project that has proven to be a great success; one that has created new jobs, new demand for home grown timber from the Southwest and has brought new customers to Duchy Timber.

The company last made its own sheds and summerhouses around 2003 and in the intervening time between then and 2012 we sold sheds built by other local companies. Whilst these sheds were a good value, local product, it was decided that if Duchy Timber were to build its own sheds and summerhouses, they would need to be amongst the best sheds and summerhouses available.

Chris Maynard, our new Marketing Coordinator was tasked with conducting market research to see what kind of specifications and prices are available locally and nationally and how our competitors deal with delivery and erection. He found that there is a wide range of prices and specifications available and that there are many solutions to the issue of delivery and erection in a customer’s garden. A strategy was formulated, a specification created and a launch at the Royal Cornwall Show was agreed.

We looked back through the archive and found that the old plans had been discarded at some point in the last ten years, so the company got to work with some CAD software and began designing the cornerstone of the new range, the 2.4m x 1.8m apex shed and a 3.0m x 2.4m summerhouse.

Soon the Royal Cornwall Show was upon us and over 20 summerhouse and shed orders were taken in all shapes and sizes, along with a great number of orders for our new and existing garden furniture ranges.

Duchy Timber at the Royal Cornwall Show.

Overall the show was our most successful ever and the interest, hype and enquiries generated by this one event has driven and extended our summer season through to the middle of November!

We won’t be resting on our laurels either; new products and new opportunities across the Southwest region will be coming along during 2014. Watch this space!

Do You Know Where Your Garden Furniture Comes From?

Duchy Timber's log park contains sustainably sourced timber from Cornwall, Devon & Somerset.

With modern global trade and the UK’s abandonment of manufacturing, your garden furniture could come from anywhere. Some places a lot less reputable than others.

Through global industry accreditations such as Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), there are ways for you as a consumer to make a more informed choice when it comes to purchasing your new wooden garden furniture.

Cornwall and Devon benefit from huge areas of woodland and luckily has a well-established forestry and timber industry that can not only sustainably manage these reserves to high standards that are globally-recognised, but can also process that harvested crop into high value products for construction and agriculture as well as your home & garden.

Obviously, timber from your local community, instead of timber that has been shipped thousands of miles around the world, has far better environmental credentials. But local timber is not just better for the environment, it also gives you piece of mind that it is benefiting ancient local industries and trades. Just like the minced beef for your family’s spaghetti Bolognese this Saturday or the milk on your corn flakes this morning; buying local is good for you, your community, the local economy and the environment.

In 1958, the Duchy of Cornwall set up a sawmill at Downend near Lostwithiel. Now owned by a forester with more than twenty years industry experience, the sawmill is now one of the largest in the south west and is the beating heart of Duchy Timber Limited. Duchy Timber garden furniture, gates and fencing products are made from wood that is sustainably felled within Cornwall, Devon and Somerset and are handmade by experienced craftsmen using traditional techniques.

Duchy Timber Develop a New Home Grown Garden Furniture Range for 2013 (Part One)

Duchy Timber is an established timber manufacturing and merchanting business and we have an equally established range of products for our various markets and customers.

We have been producing quality garden furniture made from timber felled in the south west of the UK for years. It’s a concentrated range that includes picnic tables, benches, seats and a large dining table. We felt that we could expand the range by complimenting the existing items and designing new ones and, as a result, increase the demand for locally grown timber and the value added in the south west region.

It was with much interest that we noted the contents of a recent timber industry report commissioned by the Forestry Commission entitled “Opportunities to Add Value to South West Home Grown Timber – Analysing the BusinessCase”. In it, the consultants identified that:

“The best opportunities for processing more of the potentially available roundwood in the SW is to encourage and support the existing sawmills to increase production by expanding their existing markets and improving or developing new product lines.” (Forestry Commission England & South West Woodland Renaissance Partnership, 2011).[i]

This conclusion is in harmony with Duchy Timber’s strategy of adding value to home grown timber and with this call to action ringing in our ears, we got to work in 2012 concentrating on developing our value-added products, specifically our garden furniture range.

Duchy Timber Companion Seat.

In October 2012 we brought in joiner and 3D Design graduate Ian Reveley to the carpentry shop and briefed him to create a range of new pieces based on existing construction methods and the materials already available in the yard. Over the next couple of months Ian set to and created almost 30 pieces for consideration, testing and development. 

As Ian built up this large range of pieces, management and marketing were on hand to give their opinions and to make suggestions for further developments. We also sought the advice of one of our distributors; Sustainable Furniture. Some of the early pieces went through several generations of production until all involved were happy to release them onto a wider audience. Through the several generations it was clear that we were going to end up with three distinct lines within our product range. Some of the new pieces augmented our current range, the majority of them were entirely new, but fell into two very distinctive styles.

At the end of November 2012 we devised a score sheet for colleagues across the company and asked as many of them as possible to mark each item on five simple scoring points.

Guys from the yard marking the furniture prototypes.

Once we had received a good number of responses from across the company, we decided not to pursue the least popular products and by doing so ended up with a solid 13 items. These remaining pieces will go on into the next stage of our process: materials & labour cost analysis.

Stay tuned to Duchy Timber’s Blog to find out what happens next! Alternatively, go to our website to find out more about the company and its current products.

[i] Forestry Commission England & South West Woodland Renaissance Partnership (2011) Opportunities to Add Value to South West Home Grown Timber – Analysing the Business Case. Bristol: Forestry Commission.