20 | Country Market Update: Ireland
pallet production, equally there is nobody very excited and in terms of volumes we are doing a bit less than we were – but it’s always a full week.”
Above: Log supply is plentiful
The fencing market, which slowed as expected in Q4 has been “okay” in Q1, the contact said, although the Easter surge that everyone anticipates hadn’t really happened because the weather was so poor. “But we’re not down about it yet because the weather is changing and we are expecting things to pick up a bit. If it was to stay wet for another two months then we’d have a much bigger issue.” Another, however, said he didn’t anticipate a good fencing season. “I think every garden in the UK and probably Europe has been done up over the last two or three years during Covid,” he said, adding that nowadays if people had to choose between investing in their gardens or going on holiday, they were likely to choose the latter.
◄ “You would have hoped that new build development in the UK and Ireland would have been more effective at this stage because we need more houses, but I don’t think the governments have got it right in incentivising people to build and with interest rates [so high] people are slow to borrow money.” And, he said “there is too much timber on the market for the demand that is out there. The Scandinavians are the biggest drivers of pushing [construction timber] prices down and they’ve tried to claw some of that back in the last couple of weeks into Q2, with mixed success. In some cases they got marginal increases and in others they just maintained. But the volumes are still around.”
He went on to say that he was most concerned about the pallet sector, which is a good indicator of how strong or weak the overall economy is.
“Every facet of manufacturing, whether it’s food, pharmaceuticals, construction, you name it, everything is delivered on a pallet and it’s been unbelievably poor.” He added that year-on-year pallet business was back 25-30% on expected volume, “which is huge”.
Other contacts were more positive – or, perhaps more accurately, less negative – about pallets, however, with one referring to the market as “really steady”. “There is nobody down and out and feeling crap about
A fencing and pallets specialist bucked the Q4 trend somewhat and saw its customers ordering in November/December after destocking in September/October. “The end of the year was a lot better than we thought it was going to be,” said the contact. “We finished with a bit of stock but only because of where Christmas fell. The only timber we put into stock was five days production – everything else was sold.” However, Q1 has been “very slow”. “January and February we got a bit of a lift because of the good weather but March was an horrendous month and that definitely slowed things down. April will be a sluggish month and we are really looking for things to kick off in May. If it doesn’t kick off in May then we’re all in trouble.”
And yet, he added, for all the gloom and doom, timber is still moving and the mill came out of March with very little stock. “We’ve virtually no stock [in April] but the order book is not great. We’re doing much more spot selling than in the past. Spot selling would have accounted for about 15- 20% of sales and now it’s closer to 40-50%. That means you have to put the right timber on the ground. You need to be flexible, turn sizes around, cancel sizes at the last minute and put something through the mill that you know is going to move within the week. “Customers think they know the mills have got the stock, which they don’t necessarily, so if they come looking and you don’t have it then you’ve lost that order. It’s a game of cat and mouse and it’s messy and difficult to call.”
Above: The felling licence application process has improved but challenges remain TTJ | May/June 2023 |
www.ttjonline.com
He said prices had “taken a hammering” with featheredge board dropping 30-40% from last October and pallet “following suit – probably down 15-20% this year”. A couple of contacts mentioned that BSW Group’s acquisition of the Scott Group, a leading supplier of timber pallets and bespoke
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