Every structural timber commission we take on uses material from our own woodland in North Wales, supplemented where necessary from Welsh and UK sources. This is not a marketing position — it is a supply chain choice with consequences for carbon, quality, and rural economics. This article explains those consequences plainly.
Carbon miles
Timber imported from British Columbia travels roughly 8,000 miles by sea before it arrives at a UK merchant’s yard. Scandinavian timber travels 1,200 to 1,800 miles. our Douglas Fir travels approximately 60 miles from their North Wales woodland to the Welshpool sawmill and workshop. The embodied carbon difference at that transport stage is not small — a shipping container of structural timber from Canada has a transport carbon footprint orders of magnitude greater than the same volume of timber moved by lorry from Gwynedd to Powys.
The transport carbon is only part of the story. The carbon sequestered in the tree during its growth is substantially greater than any transport emission — a mature Douglas Fir stores several tonnes of carbon in its trunk and branches, and that carbon remains locked in the timber after felling and processing. Welsh-grown timber that remains in Welsh buildings contributes to Wales’s carbon balance in a way that imported timber cannot, because the sequestration happened here and the material stays here.
Supporting Welsh woodland
Managed woodland requires revenue to continue. Planting, thinning, felling, replanting, deer fencing, track maintenance — these are all costs of running a productive woodland. If the timber has no commercial value, the economics of maintaining managed woodland fail. A woodland owner who cannot sell their timber at a worthwhile price eventually stops managing the woodland. Unmanaged woodland is not necessarily bad — ancient woodland is better unmanaged — but commercially planted productive woodland was planted for a purpose, and that purpose is to grow structural timber. Without a buyer, it fails that purpose.
Every commission we take on provides direct revenue to the North Wales woodland that supplied its timber. That revenue funds the continued management of the woodland: the replanting that follows each felling coupe, the thinning that allows the remaining trees to grow to structural size, the track maintenance that allows harvesting without environmental damage. The connection between a commission in Powys and a plantation in Gwynedd is direct and financial. Commissioning from us is not a metaphorical act of environmental support; it is a specific and documented economic contribution to a specific piece of Welsh land.
Provenance certainty
Timber certification schemes — FSC, PEFC, and their national equivalents — are credible systems designed to provide assurance that timber comes from responsibly managed sources. They rely on auditors visiting certified operations and on self-reporting within the supply chain. For bulk commodity timber from large operations in well-regulated jurisdictions, these schemes provide reasonable assurance. For timber from more complex supply chains — secondary processing in countries with varying environmental standards, mixed sources aggregated at a single mill — the assurance is more attenuated.
our provenance is direct. There is no certification scheme, auditor, or self-reporting required because the chain of custody ends at the same company. They planted the trees. They manage the woodland. They fell to their own programme. They process at their own sawmill. When a client asks where the timber in their frame came from, we can give a specific answer: the North Wales woodland at a named location, felled in a particular month, dried for a specific duration. That answer is not dependent on a third party’s audit of someone else’s operation.
The economic argument
Money spent on Welsh-grown timber stays in Wales. our staff are paid in Wales. Their forestry contractors are Welsh businesses. Their sawmill employees live locally. The suppliers of sawmill consumables, PPE, and equipment are overwhelmingly regional. The economic multiplier of local sourcing — the proportion of a pound spent that remains in the local economy through secondary spending by the people and businesses who received it — is significantly higher for a locally sourced timber commission than for an imported commodity timber purchase where the economic benefit accrues primarily to the exporting country’s economy.
This argument has become fashionable in recent years, but it is not new. The logic of supporting local producers to maintain local economic activity and local skills is straightforward and has been understood by rural communities for centuries. What has changed is that the alternative — cheap imported timber from globalised supply chains — has become so readily available that the local option requires a conscious choice. we have made that choice at the business level. Clients who commission from them participate in it.
The quality argument
Provenance is not just an environmental virtue. A joiner who knows where their timber came from knows things about that timber that are directly useful to the quality of the work. We know the growth ring count of their Douglas Fir stock — a fast-grown tree produces wider rings with lower density than a slow-grown one, and that affects how the timber machines and how it behaves in service. They know the drying duration — timber that has been dried for the right amount of time behaves differently from green timber or from over-dried timber. They know the growth conditions — a North Wales plantation on good acid soil with adequate rainfall and managed spacing produces different timber from a plantation on thin upland soil with irregular rainfall.
That knowledge feeds directly into decisions: which section to select for a principal post, which board to avoid for a precision joint, how long to leave the stock before cutting. Imported timber arrives with a grade stamp and a species declaration. our timber arrives with a history. The history is not sentimental — it is technically useful information that improves the finished work.
To read more about our woodland and how their timber is grown, visit the Our Woodland page.