6 | UK News
2022 begins with completion of two industry mega acquisition deals
says will make it Europe’s largest company in the sawmill and solid wood processing industry.
The second acquisition completion (on December 31, 2021) is Huws Gray finalising the £520m purchase of Grafton’s traditional merchanting business. The BSW deal sees the Scotland-based sawmilling group with a turnover of around £700m and a production capacity of over 1.2 million m3
of sawn timber
per year joining European sawmilling powerhouse Binderholz.
Above: BSW production facilities
Binderholz will now have a cumulative annual turnover of €2.6bn and around 5,000 employees. The brand name BSW will be retained after integration into the Binderholz Group and the current management will continue to lead the company.
Reinhard Binder, CEO of Binderholz, said the Binderholz and BSW businesses both pursued a forward-looking, yet at the same time, a “tradition-conscious corporate philosophy”.
Above: Huws Gray builders merchant site
Two mega large acquisitions in the UK sawmilling and merchanting sectors have been completed as the new year gets under way.
Binderholz Group has announced the completion of its acquisition of BSW Timber Ltd, a takeover which Binderholz
“The purchase of BSW is an essential component of our long-term expansion and sustainability strategy,” he said. “BSW is active along the entire value chain of the sawmill industry, from sustainable forest management and maintenance – with capacity to plant up to 50 million high quality seedlings per year – to timber harvesting, sawmill operations, timber processing and distribution as well as biomass energy.
He said the step strengthens Binderholz’s
positioning in the growing British market. Meanwhile, Grafton’s traditional merchant business joining expanding Huws Gray includes Buildbase and The Timber Group (Beaumont / Brewer / L&G). The sale process was first announced on July 1, 2021 and followed a comprehensive strategic review of the business which concluded that exiting this segment of the building materials distribution market in Great Britain would enable the Grafton Group to optimise shareholder value. Over a month ago, the Competition and
Markets Authority (CMA) announced that the sale of Grafton Group’s traditional merchanting business to Huws Gray may result in a substantial lessening of competition in one particular geographic area.
At the time the CMA said the merger would be referred for a Phase 2 investigation unless the merging parties offered acceptable undertakings to address the competition concerns.
Grafton Group had earlier responded to the CMA statement, saying it was considering whether to accept an undertaking in lieu of a Phase 2 reference. It had added that completion of the acquisition had not been conditional on the outcome of the CMA process. No further information has yet been publicised by the CMA, Grafton or Huws Gray on any undertakings agreed with reference to the competition questions in the specific geographic area highlighted by the CMA.
Storm Arwen damages a third of FLS’s annual felling programme
Forest and Land Scotland (FLS) estimates that up to 900ha in forests that it manages, were damaged across the east coast, Perthshire, Aberdeenshire and south Scotland during Storm Arwen last November.
This is the equivalent of nearly a third of the annual FLS tree felling programme in a single night.
Many of these were mature trees, ready for harvesting, but windblow makes the extraction more difficult. Over the next 12 months, FLS aims to plant approximately 25 million new tree seedlings to create new woodlands and restock existing forests where older trees have been felled, as well as repairing storm damaged woodlands.
TTJ | January/February 2022 |
www.ttjonline.com
Tree species include native species such as birch, oak, aspen, rowan and commercial conifers such as Scots pine and Sitka spruce; around half are grown in FLS’s dedicated tree nursery near Elgin. All the new forestry, especially the commercial forestry, will help contribute to meeting Scotland’s climate change targets by locking up carbon.
Increasing the proportion of productive forestry is also vital to reduce the UK’s dependence on timber imports. “The damage caused by Storm Arwen to publicly managed forests that FLS manages is only half the story, and privately owned forests have been just as badly affected,” said Doug Knox, FLS head of technical services group.
“The scale of the damage is making significant demands on the forestry sector. We are now having to make substantial re- adjustments in work programmes to deal with the clear-up. We are working closely with others in the wider forestry industry to build momentum.
“Meanwhile, our large scale tree planting programmes continue so that we can create new conifer and broadleaved forests that will act as the carbon sinks of the future and help to build Scotland’s timber industry. “As managers of around 8% of Scotland’s land, our work supports and sustains communities in rural Scotland and conserves and enhances our natural environment for future generations.”
UK News
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