8 NEWS FEATURE
Housebuilding under “enormous pressure” from timber shortage
lobal timber shortages and rapidly rising prices have put the UK housebuilding industry’s supply chain “in the eye of a perfect storm,” according to UK roofing companies. Some of the leading businesses and organisations from the roofing industry have expressed “grave concerns” about extremely low stocks of European softwood (used to produce UK roofing battens), in a context of sustained high levels of demand from the housebuilding industry, as it continues to recover from the pandemic. Avonside Group, Marley and SR Timber, alongside the National Federation of Roofing Contractors (NFRC), have joined forces to highlight the impacts shortages are having. They are fuelling “steep and rapid” cost inflation for roofing contrac- tors, according to the firms, “forcing them to make a choice.” A further reason for shortages is the supply chain “struggling to hold back the tide of global factors that are far beyond the UK’s control,” said the group.
G A GLOBAL ISSUE
Demand from the three biggest global markets (China, America and Russia) has reportedly contributed to a situation that may take months to stabilise and years to fully recover.
China has been hit hard by flooding and strict forest protection measures, seeing a near halt in domestic logging, and forcing
it to look to other regions for additional supply. Meanwhile Russia, the world’s largest exporter, is proposing a ban on exports of softwood and hardwood logs. North America is still reportedly reeling from its first lockdown, which led to the closure of half of Canadian and a third of US sawmills, and a halt in exports. The situation was exacerbated by wildfires and hurricanes, and imports are at the highest level in 15 years.
Despite sawmill closures during the first lockdowns, the major European producers such as Sweden maintained their production, and in some cases increased it. However, in the space of a few weeks, Europe became the world’s leading exporter of sawn softwood, and in Scandinavia and central Europe, sawn log prices (as well as routing and transport costs), are rising rapidly. This combination of factors, plus growth in DIY and garden projects during lockdowns, a robust construction sector recovery, and shipping- and freight- related issues including Brexit, are all conspiring against a return to plentiful timber stocks.
HOUSEBUILDING IMPACT Roofing contractors say the biggest impacts on the UK sector are cost and productivity. Delays in supplies of materials such as battens present “a real and serious” risk to housebuilders’ production schedules, the financial impact
of which can be “severe.” However, costs of avoiding such delays within the supply chain can itself be significant, said the roofing group. Avonside Group’s CEO Eddie Stanton commented: “The price of battens is already more than 50 per cent up over the past six months, and lead times are getting longer. This is putting enormous pressure on the housebuilding supply chain in terms of what price increases they can absorb, and what they have to pass on.”
Marley’s roof systems director Stuart Nicholson said: “The global/US pressure of increased demand for timber has exacerbated the supply issues caused by the pandemic and Brexit. It remains extremely challenging.” SR Timber’s trading director Shaun
Revill added that the UK roofing sector has performed well so far “when you realise that the industry hasn’t seen anything like this since World War II.” According to the NFRC, two-thirds of roofing contractors saw material availability deteriorate in the first quarter of the year, and 89 per cent reported price rises. Timber battens were the second- highest material shortage after roof tiles, with a third of contractors reporting shortages. The problem’s so severe that it was the top concern for roofing contrac- tors – above Covid and Brexit. James Talman, chief executive of the NFRC, added: “Our supplier members
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