UK Timber Industry Factsheet - Growing The Use Of Wood!

Monday 21^st October 2019.

How big is the industry?

• £7.6 billion at equivalent manufacturers’ selling prices – putting the industry in the top 20 UK industries.

• Direct employment in the timber industry is 115,000, around 3.5% of employees in manufacturing.

How much wood do we use?

• The UK consumes 17 million m3 of wood and panel products each year. That’s roughly 170,000 double-decker buses. Placed end to end this convoy would stretch from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and back to Dundee.

• Of this, 10.5 million m3 is solid wood: softwoods 9.9 million m3 , hardwoods 0.6 million m3 and 6.5 million m3 are sheet materials, from plywood to Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF), to Oriented Strand Board (OSB) to particleboard.

Where does it come from?

• Of UK consumption, 11.3 million m3 , or 66%, is imported and 34%, or 5.7 million m3 , is produced in the UK.

• Of solid wood consumed, 2.5 million m3 (2.45 million m3 softwood, 0.05 million m3 hardwood) is produced in the UK, and 8 million m3 (7.45 million m3 softwood, 0.55 million m3 hardwood) comes from overseas.

• Of sheet materials consumed, 3.3 million m3 is imported and 3.2 million m3 is produced in the UK. UK production is primarily particleboard. No plywood is manufactured in the UK.

• 60% of all wood and wood-products imported into the UK come from Scandinavia (primarily Sweden and Finland) and the Baltic States. Much of this is sawn softwood, or spruce and birch plywood.

• In total Europe supplies 87% of all the wood and wood-products imported into the UK.

• Europe supplies 98% of UK imports of sawn softwood.

• Europe accounts for only 57% of sawn hardwood supplies, with North America (20%), Africa (12%), Asia (9%) and South America (2%) providing the rest.

Where is it used?

• Just over 61% of wood and wood-products are used in construction. OSB, plywood hoardings, softwood floor joists, engineered I-Beams, roof trusses and hardwood flooring are just some of the many uses of wood.

• 15% of wood, mainly sheet materials like MDF, go into furniture manufacture.

• 15%, of mainly softwood, goes into the packaging market, principally as pallets.

• Fencing and other outdoor uses, such as timber decking, represent just under 6% of the market.

Is wood sustainable?

• Wood is the most sustainable and only renewable mainstream building material known to man. Sustainably managed forests can supply the world forever. Wood literally grows on trees.

• The vast majority of wood purchased in the UK comes from sustainably managed or well-managed forests.

• To prevent illegal products entering the supply chain a number of certification schemes are available to give evidence of legality and sustainability. The two major schemes are the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forestry Certification (PEFC). Others include Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI) and the Canadian Standards Authority (CSA).

• Nearly 60% of wood used in the UK is certified, and where it isn’t, schemes such as the TTF’s Responsible Purchasing Policy (RPP) can be used to minimise the risk of illegal logs entering the supply chain.

• Wood also fights climate change. Roughly every cubic metre growth of a tree sucks up 1 tonne of carbon, which remains locked up when the tree is used to make wood and wood products. This can be stored for centuries.

• Wood is easily recycled.

• Wood can be used as a biofuel.

Credit: http://www.cti-timber.org/sites/default/files/Timber%20Industry%20Fact%20Sheet%20Final.pdf