The importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies, and ensuring sustainable supplies of timber, were the key focus of the Panel Products session at the TDUK Global Market Conference, which was chaired by TDUK CEO Chris Sutton.
Andrew Tait, Commercial Director of Egger Group (Western Europe); Chris King, Managing Director, Commercial of MEDITE SMARTPLY (UK); and Michelle Buckland, Chief Commercial Officer of MIRO Forestry (West Africa), all joined the panel to discuss their experiences of the market, and to emphasise the importance of education and legislative support in promoting the use of timber in the built environment.
Michelle began by discussing MIRO Forestry’s work in Ghana and Sierra Leone, where the company is working on reforestation and plantation plywood production.
She said: “The tropical belt has been degraded over decades and is now ripe for reforestation, especially in Ghana. In the 1980s and early 1990s it was massively deforested for hardwood production, and sadly the forest wasn’t replanted. Then in the late 1990s Ghana was hit by some fairly severe forest fires, and the entire forest was pretty much wiped out. So, the whole of Ghana, from the middle down to the south, is degraded forest land.
“MIRO was set up 15 years ago, and we started reforesting the degraded lands for plantation plywood. Around 25% of our land is for conservation and reforesting the natural forest.
“We also have a second plantation in Sierra Leone, which was decimated by civil war about 100 years ago and where most of the forest was cut down and needs some investment. Between the two sites we have about 40,000 hectares, which is the equivalent of 500,000 hectares of birch forest because our rotation is five to eight years, so a tree will be fully harvestable in five to eight years.”
Michelle emphasised the need for the tropical belt to be reforested, noting recent comments by a German climate change scientist that replanting the degraded tropical belt across the world could bring the world back to a zero degrees temperature increase within seven to 15 years. “It’s a really important part of the world that we should be focusing our energies on,” she said. “Plantation species can sit alongside conservation areas, they can be a carbon sink, and they can sort out the CO2 issues and the lack of supply issues that we have.
“We also need to look at the circular economy and how we’re reusing timber,” she continued. “We’re not using it in the right ways for the right applications. We use very expensive timber for disposable purposes. And we need to be looking at the fibre supply – the MDF industry is ripe for reusing plywood that’s already been used 20 times before.”
Chris King then moved on to issues around the supply of virgin fibre and the need to put value back in the sector. “In Ireland we’re not fundamentally troubled on the supply of virgin fibre, thanks to the way the land is being managed. If you look at MDF, there is lots of recycling technology going on in that space, such as MDF Recovery in the UK, and other variants that are under development.”
He continued by highlighting the importance of building a sustainable industry and putting more value into the category. He said: “The panacea is not necessarily a brand new product with a brand new application, it’s [about] retaining what we’ve got and fundamentally putting more value in the category. The industry is skilled at ripping money out of itself, so it’s trying to put that back in.
“Also, the drive to build with timber using off-site manufacture, particularly in the UK, may have an impact on wood and OSB as a category, as well as many others. Trying to work out all the opportunities and challenges that might come with that might drive innovation in the process, as regulation often does.”
Chris Sutton then asked whether issues around fire when working with timber in the built environment is still causing challenges for the industry.
Chris King agreed, adding: “We are not going to fix that challenge just by having a fire retardant board in whatever we may be doing. Clearly, that offers some assistance, but it is very much about understanding the design, [and] the various components that go along with it.”
Lobbying for a level playing field
Andrew emphasised the need for strong partnerships within the sawmilling industry and the importance of planting more trees to ensure a sustainable supply of timber.
He said: “At Egger Group we have spent the last 25 years setting up a network in the UK to recover timber from domestic waste industrial applications. Over 50% of that goes into our product, and that’s a very successful technology for us. I’ve been very encouraged to hear comments earlier about aligning as an industry in terms of reusing timber, not just burning it.
“There are 4.5 million tonnes of timber waste produced in the UK every year – 3 million tonnes go to biomass and are burnt, and one million goes to broadly particleboard manufacturing and 500,000 tonnes to animal bedding. We’re not asking for subsidies, but we are asking for a level playing field.
“Like others who have spoken earlier today, at Egger we’re broadly confident on fibre supply, because we have some great partnerships and we work very well with the saw milling industry. And the remainder comes from unprocessable logs that won’t go through saw milling, such as oversized, diseased and damaged timber, for example. But there are some challenges, and it’s important that we all work together in the sector.”
The panellists agreed that legislation is key to ensuring positive growth within the timber market.
Andrew added that the industry needed to plant more productive forest and have a legislative-based hierarchy of timber use, as in the European Union, rather than just broad guidelines.
Chris King said: “Getting things legislated for makes the difference, because that then becomes investable for the industry and the supply chain.”
What does ESG mean?
The panellists also agreed that ESG is fundamental, and that customers are beginning to ask more questions around sustainability and the environmental impact of the materials they specify.
Chris King described ESG as “absolutely fundamental”, especially with larger customers and government business. “It’s something we’ve invested heavily in, and we think it’s the right thing to do.”
Michelle believes the industry needs to do more to help the next generation understand ESG and the role timber can play in transforming the built environment. She said: “It’s really important for our industry as a whole, and it’s about training the next generation to understand the materials, and to be involved in the conversation about what the built environment should look like in the future. It’s the next generation that’s going to make the difference. It starts with bringing apprenticeships into the industry, training people at school level and making people understand what the what the business is about.”
