ash_smith123

My HM130 is up for sale if anyone's interested? 2 years old, hasn't been used in the last year. 3 phase £2k

I think there are in Wales ( wood fuel wales may be able to advise) but when I had a look a year or so ago in the Midlands where I am there was not.
 
In a nutshell if you have a boni fide buisness, operate from a site with proper planning permission to process and sell firewood and can offer new employment opportunities then if there is money available you might stand a chance.
 
A

Sorry but commercially air drying makes no sense in firewood. The same way you see harvesters and forwarders in the forest doing the same job as a chainsaw and a horse. Big sawmills pumping out cubic metres of timber on big saw lines instead of one lad sat on a woodmizer doing a cube a day. Unfortunately anything on a commercial scale has an environmental impact. The end user is the one that decides on how the whole supply chain operates. If the end user only wants air dried firewood everyone will be selling air dried firewood but they don't so we will carry on selling kiln dried firewood.
The industry has done this to itself. So many people have sold substandard firewood for years and the customers have finally over the last 5/7 years got used to buying quality kiln dried firewood. They will only buy it once and not go back to Dave the farmer that's scrapped a load of crap off the barn floor that he sold as "barn dried" that he cut 3 weeks ago.

[emoji23] what a load of [emoji90]
All I see is a biased comparison of 2 different products, one you like and the other you don't.
I don't know what you need to carry on trying to justify to us that seasoned firewood seems to be far superior than kiln drying it.
We are retail businesses, I supply what the customer wants and customers want kiln dried hardwood.
If youve got the time, space and can be arsed you crack on processing and leaving firewood outside for 6-12 months then fine, but stop badgering the people that don't or don't want to.
I supplied 2 products for the last 6 years, seasoned hardwood (25% that we actually kiln dried in our own kiln) and a kiln dried product that we bought in at 15% moisture. Sales were always around 70% kiln dried to 30% seasoned.
This winter was the first time we stopped supplying seasoned hardwood and only sold kiln dried. Sales were up around 10% overall this winter.

No one's arranged a time to "do the deal" he never replied so it's still available if trigger_andy wants it!

Will have our 130 mill up for sale soon if you're interested??

The last 3 weeks have been crazy. Contactless delivery with everyone paying when they order. We had around a 10 day wait at one point but 2 vans out all day every day the boys have smashed it. Getting 20+ cube out most days. Bulked a load of local deliveries together one day last week and managed to get 14 runs of 3 cube out.

Bedmax ones are good. You can get good deals through wholesalers but I would try and go direct and get better prices

A friend bought 1 of the cheap Chinese sausage briquettes makers a few years ago,
It was more aggro than anything, it was constantly blocking the dies up solid even though the dust was kiln dried. He sold it 6 months after he bought it.
Would a waste oil burner be suitable for a kiln? It would be a lot easier to regulate the temperature and maintain a constant temperature for 2-3 days

It's bonkers at the moment. 2 vans full the whole of next week now, booking deliveries for Wednesday 18th onwards [emoji51] Won't be long and we'll be booked up for Christmas.

After Brexit, Latvian firewood will be heavily tariffed , making it uneconomical to import.

WTO tariffs for timber products in the event of “no-deal” Brexit - Timber Trade Federation

TTF.CO.UK

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WTO tariffs for timber products in the event of “no-deal” Brexit

After Brexit, Latvian firewood will be heavily tariffed , making it uneconomical to import.

Might be interested. Hauliers are coming from Kent back to South Wales empty so I might be able to sort a back load. I'll let you know asap

At least I would have thought. 2000 cube with log sales being approximately half the year. 26 weeks delivering 5 days a week would be 130 days so you would have to deliver 15 cubes a day! That's one very busy delivery guy and you got a lot of logs to cut as well.

I would probably get a little unit with a forklift and delivery truck and import everything. If you find a tidy supplier there's still good money in it if you can get the customers but again your right in a minimum of 2000 cube a year to make a good wage. Low starting and running costs.

You've probably got a point, we only expanded rapidly because we could rent machinery and sheds off the farm business. There's realistically not many other savings though if you actually cost things properly. We've somehow got ourselves in the position of the firewood supporting the farm business but I think that's more issues with farming than success with firewood if I'm honest.
 
On a side note if you're looking at 50k rent wouldn't you be better off buying a couple of acres and building a shed or is that a non starter with planning? Just thinking that's 250k over 5 years and you could do an amazing yard with that.

Not sure about the rest of the UK but there's been a lot of grants the last few years in Wales. Usually around 40% so the chances are pretty good they've had one. 
 
We've gone for 2 in the last 10 years and they're obviously a big help but I'm not sure I would go through it again - the paperwork is horrendous as an understatement and there's a lot of conditions attached; you have to create a job, machinery has to be new, multiple quotes through specific websites, keep everything for 5 years etc. On top of that we had to start a separate business as agriculture is exempt and there's still a couple of loans to pay off.
 
Obviously that's no issue though, life is easy on 'Daddys farm' [emoji6]

Generally arb arisings are all shapes and sizes and don't lend themselves to a processor and in reality there are very few mobile setups around. I think the 'get in a contractor' is great for domestic customers and the bloke doing a small amount to sell, but without a log deck output is down by at least 50%. If you have bought in roundwood to handle without a grab of some sort it's murder.
 
Having started the hard way and built up the equipment, I can say with certainty that even with all the gear making a significant PROFIT is hard to achieve. With 2 people, given the right spec. timber we can load deck, process and stack 15m3 of crated 10" logs per hour and keep the setup tidy. Even with this level of production making  a worthwhile PROFIT is still a challenge. We never handle the logs during any part of the process, so how anyone doing a few 100 metres manually can survive is beyond me and in reality they must be just surviving.
 
The Firewood sector is surely going the same way as farming, we will see far far less producers, as the  larger setups will be the only financially viable standalone businesses.
 
Talking to the timber Hauliers, at least 6 producers within 75 miles of me have ceased their Firewood businesses in the last 9 months.

Supply will be the biggest problem facing us all in the years to come. We have gone from producing 100% hardwood 2 years ago to now 95% softwood this year and import the rest as we can't find the 1500+ tons of hardwood we need. One of our haulers said the other day they had 3 loads of processor size ash 5 miles away from me but we couldn't have it as euroforest were paying them £900 per load on haulage alone to take it to the biomass plant in Kent (from South Wales) taking into account roadside hardwood prices are £60+ a ton we are at £100+ a ton delivered it. Bonkers.
We have been going for 7 years now and would struggle to make a decent yearly wage for 2 of us on just firewood, the timber merchant side of the business is now bigger within 2 years.

Thanks for the advice. I’ll get it cut, split and under cover as quick as possible. The lorry was absolutely fully loaded when it arrived, I got a shock when I saw quite how much there was. It’s my first time getting a delivery this big but at about £23 a tonne (excluding delivery) I think it’s an experiment that will prove worthwhile.....[emoji846]

Several people in the area have packed up,  just cant make money buying in at £85 a ton plus VAT and trying to compete with at least two people locally ( I am about 10 miles from Hemploe) selling cheap and at least one of those offers free carry and stack up to 20m from point of delivery.      I do note though that while their prices have not risen for some years the bag size has fallen down to 0.8 cu m. so a 900mm bag with a bit of stretch.     No point being a busy fool.
 

All our softwood is homegrown but last year with the lack of hardwood in the area most of the hardwood we had to unfortunately import. We've hopefully got a few good loads of hardwood lined up this summer but the wood will all have to be purchased before August I would say this year. We are just too busy in the winter to keep up with wholesale orders as well [emoji106].
Another person to try for hardwood is Walkers logs. They are Gloucester way and do home grown wholesale kiln dried hardwood by the artic load. Would be worth a try [emoji106]

I did give you a price last year if your still interested? we are now Ready to burn certified on hardwood and softwood. Only down the road and always happy to help [emoji106]

Sounds similar to a cowboy company that only do wholesale I bought from in Penrith a few years ago.

Just had a price for £95+vat delivered.
You can buy imported for £70 a loose cubic metre at the moment.