Wood from Sweden.

[King Rollo]

Not knowing a lot about wood but surrounded by it!

Leaving the Uk some years ago to live in isolated splendor in Sweden, I find myself living in the middle of a forest,suprisng!I am sure I don’t need to tell you about the abundance of wood here of various different kinds. Unlike much of Sweden we do have a lot of hard woods around here as well.

Although having flexible job I do have to travel significantly and need to get out before it kills me! So,I am looking at different business opportunities.

Much of the forests seems un kept and un managed, they only take wood for personally use.With many of my neighbours having over 100 hectares.They, usually enlist a large Sweden orgnaisation to harvest the wood and give a percentage to the owner, it’s not much!.

So, If I wanted to get into the export of wood logs to the Uk what’s the market like, is it viable? Is it been done?

Does anybody have any experience? If we did this backwards what price would I need to sell at to make it attractive? Say an ISO container, how many bags would I get in etc etc

Thanks in advance

[Woody Wood Pecker]

How much homework have you put into this idea?

 

How do you get charged for a container - is it by weight or size? Where would you ship to - from what I can gather on here, firewood is more expensive in northern England than in the south. Would you be shipping cordwood or processed and seasoned wood? You may get your answer to that if you get charged by weight for shipping rather than volume.

 

From what I can gather, seasoned and chopped logs are about £80 per m3.

 

Just looked on Wikipedia (so it must be true ) and an ISO container comes in a variety of sizes. Most are 8ft wide by 8ft high - so 2.4m by 2.4m. Assuming you went for the longest, that would be 16.2 metres long - you'd get 64 bags in but would have a fair bit of space at the sides and top. The actual volume of the container is 93 metres though so the potential is there to get more in if you didn't use cube bags.

 

Let's, for ease of calculations, say that you could get 80 bags in. That would give a street value (sounds like illegal substances) of £6,400. Someone's going to have to buy, store and sell these - not sure of how much they'd want per bag but you may get someone who will do that for £15 - you may not (so they make £1,200). Would £5,200 cover your shipping, haulage, purchase of wood and bags, export and/or import duty and give you a return on your labour?

 

G

[AngusMF250]

How much homework have you put into this idea?

 

How do you get charged for a container - is it by weight or size? Where would you ship to - from what I can gather on here, firewood is more expensive in northern England than in the south. Would you be shipping cordwood or processed and seasoned wood? You may get your answer to that if you get charged by weight for shipping rather than volume.

 

From what I can gather, seasoned and chopped logs are about £80 per m3.

G

 

He s doing his homework.

 

The price also varies in Scotland, but is probably less than what they pay south of the border. However, we do have ports in the east of Scotland with strong links to Scandinavia. Infact you ll be surprised to hear that at one port, a boat load of timber leaves once a week for Sweden and brings back paper (1 tonne rolls)

[King Rollo]

I’m still do my home work!

Thanks for your response and sorry for the late reply I have been out and about.

It seems that you can by a “cube “of seasoned! Softwood around here for £30/40 in bags ready to go, could be cheaper. Not sure of the moisture content but everybody seems happy with it here.

As you pointed out perhaps not the most efficient way to transport but may be easier to drop 64 bags in or could stack here and could have somebody in the UK stack for total volumetric efficiency. Are 64 bags a lot to shift for one retailer /wholesaler? I can burn a bag a week in the house (usually breech) so, seems an expensive way to heat and house in the UK.

Still a lot of work to do but given the potential to sell at £80, it worth a bit of home work.

I have got a few enquires out for transportation, a boat runs every other day from Goteborg to Immingham.

So, the question was Is anybody doing this? Or as it been tried and dropped?

Would it need fumigating?

 

Suppose that I set up myself, I have land and the raw materials are within easy reach! If, you have the trees to hand how many “cubes” would you expect to cut and split per day?

Keep you posted and look forward to you feed back.

Now that is the proverbial” coal to Newcastle “trees from bonny Scotland to Sweden!

Used to work out of Aberdeen and was on vacation last summer,up in Dundee,Arbroath ,beautiful.

G

[AngusMF250]

I know, its unbelievable Soctland exports some wood to Sweden, but I think this is just a trade of for the Swedes to sell us their paper.

 

I ve stayed in Karlstadt, really nice town, nice people!

[TRADITIONAL LOGGERS]

Shipping firewood is not viable as too much space between loads.

[Stu3k]

Shipping firewood is not viable as too much space between loads.

 

But logs and woodchip are , i sit watching it every day

[King Rollo]

Sorry, about the delay I also have to work.

I was thinking of the whole logistics,work effort and the costs.

So,

In the UK, firstly you need to collect or have it delivered. It would seem there is usually some distances to collect on the fantastic UK road infrastructure!

Either buy it or not.

The load, unload it and handle it.

Again, handle it. Cutting, splitting, stacking, drying, bagging and delivering.

Given the abundance of wood here and the proximity to raw materials there is less transport costs. The raw materials seem cheaper here; also we have some “right tackle “here which makes it more efficient, perhaps there could be an optimised size of tree! That would make “bagging more efficient. Or and optimised way of stacking into a container or trailer.

What about, cutting the trees into squares and then stacking in a container that could be more efficient?

At the moment a “cube “of year old beech here is £ 34.

So, I need the transport costs!

Is there a market for seasoned firewood with no effort, accept delivery to the end user or buy and retail it?

How much will a “cube “weight approx?

G