Hi guy's,
I would like to thank my UK contacts who sourced us regular supplies of quality material this year. We are always on the look out for new sources who deal a lot with ash from harvesters, contractors, woodland management company's or foresters of Estates in the UK. We ideally want tree's with a diameter at breast height of 25 cm - 50 cm, with no knots, brown stain or dry rot within the butt. We are paying the largest price per m3 for hurley ash out of all Irish buyers in the UK, £230 per m3. This price does not include extraction costs if the contractor extracts the butts with his tractor/forwarder. For £230 per m3 we only require the top of the ash be removed from the tree, leaving the butt remaining 1.4 - 1.5 meters long, refer to pictures attached of this method. When all tree's are harvested, my team & I will then arrive on site to begin felling at the root base.
My tree surgeon is felling 80 - 110 hurley butts per day, roughly three day's work to clean, fell & extract all the hurley butts roadside for loading on to a 40 ft container to my sawmill in Ireland. We always work well in conjunction with contractors regarding our dates of arrival in the UK etc. All the above statements can be verified by numerous forestry company's & Estates in England, Scotland. If you have any forestry colleagues or connections who deal with ash but haven't entered this market yet, just pm for my phone number or email address, and I can send on more pictures & videos. Happy new year, Gerry Ryan.