Woodchip export

[Watercourse management]

Just watching mega shippers on quest and they are loading woodchip for biomass plants in Sweden from the U.K.? 

[Watercourse management]

Thoughts 

[Will Heal]

It’s ducking crazy! Wood chips used to go from my bosses yard onto lorries bound for Europe. Hopefully brexit will stop this and make our island more self sufficient but I doubt it

[AHPP]

The one I usually reel off is boats of trees coming from Scandinavia to the UK passing boats of trees coming from the UK to Scandinavia. It's fucking madness. I hope they sail off the edge of the world.

[Steve Bullman]

There’s enough of a shortage in this country as it is.  I wonder if they are getting more to export it?

[gdh]

I do wonder if this is still happening given recent prices. A lot has changed in the last few years. 

[AHPP]

1 hour ago, Steve Bullman said:

There’s enough of a shortage in this country as it is.  I wonder if they are getting more to export it?

There'll be some nonsense funded by taxvictims, no doubt. If I was minded to attribute things to some global conspiracy or orderliness, I'd say it was a great way of burning oil in freight ships and all the things that entails.

Edited September 11, 2018 by AHPP

[drinksloe]

1 hour ago, AHPP said:

The one I usually reel off is boats of trees coming from Scandinavia to the UK passing boats of trees coming from the UK to Scandinavia. It's fucking madness. I hope they sail off the edge of the world.

 

To be fair they would be different products despite both being timber/trees.

 

We have always imported a bit of building grade timber from abroad as it often tends to be better quality while we often export ur chip/pulp grade timber to the same countries we import the building timber from.

Can see it making sense for them to export the better quality product for extra £££ rather than converting it to chip/pulp when they can import it cheaper

 

Wether this will slow down with the rise in timber prices in UK for chip/pulp grade wood?

Dunno if it is still going on to the same extent now, back 10+ years ago u could hardly give chip/pulp wood awy and would sit at roadside for months, now demand is throu the roof, i'd imafgine they will be buying it from across the baltic states now rather than here.

 

This whole world econmoy thing does tend to be completely bonkers, the fact its cheaper to import firewood from half across europe than in ur local woods just seems crazy to me.

Or these many wood chip power stations which then import wood from abroad, meant to be saving emissions but the carbon footprint or emissions to get chip onto the conveyor belt must be horrendous. Better just burning the desiel in the power station.

There was a fish plant near me that was actually shipping prawns to thailand to be peeled before flying them back to be processed/cooked at the local plant and meant to be a cost saving measure????

Edited September 11, 2018 by drinksloe

[AHPP]

3 minutes ago, drinksloe said:

 

To be fair they would be different products despite both being timber/trees.

 

We have always imported a bit of building grade timber from abroad as it often tends to be better quality while we often export ur chip/pulp grade timber to the same countries we import the building timber from.

Can see it making sense for them to export the better quality product for extra £££ rather than converting it to chip/pulp when they can import it cheaper

 

Wether this will slow down with the rise in timber prices in UK for chip/pulp grade wood?

 

This whole world econmoy thing does tend to be completely bonkers, the fact its cheaper to import firewood from half across europe than in ur local woods just seems crazy to me.

Or these many wood chip power stations which then import wood from abroad, meant to be saving emissions but the carbon footprint or emissions to get chip onto the conveyor belt must be horrendous. Better just burning the desiel in the power station.

There was a fish plant near me that was actually shipping prawns to thailand to be peeled before flying them back to be processed/cooked at the local plant and meant to be a cost saving measure????

It's only wood. Whatever we're importing because it's straight, tight grained, magic, whatever; it can't possibly be that we can't produce it here. We don't make much out of wood anyway.

Thomas Telford designed (among other things) the Caledonian Canal in 1800 and planted an avenue of Douglas Fir at Laggan to provide the timber to maintain it. He'd be fucking sick if he could see the the profligacy prevalent now.

[drinksloe]

It may be only wood, but considering some/many don't think soft wood is even fit for firewood!!

Most houses still rely on n awful lot of structural timber, kit houses are still the most common type of new builds in my area

I'm sure if u spoke to joiners they might disagree with u there.

 

Plenty of sawmills do cutting building grade local timber but the better stuff is imported.

Esp nowadays with the demand for chip/pulp i've seen whole clearfells sites felled purely for chipping no matter wot other produce could off been cut. harvester/forwarder boys love it as only cutting 1 size

 

And the climate soil and types of tree were planting (along side any thinning etc) will influence the grade of timber.

My part of scotland tends to be fat hairy sitka, not really great quality, u go further north and get nice striaght larchs. scots and lodgepole

 

It might not be that we can't produce that grade of timber here but more we either can't produce enough of it or cheaper to buy in from elsewhere.

 

To be honest i can see the reason for importing something like better quality building timber, but i do struggle to see how its cheaper to import kiln dried firewood

Edited September 11, 2018 by drinksloe