60 | Country Focus: France
SUMMARY
■ NBE comprises five hardwood producers
■ It was set up in the late 1980s ■ The UK accounts for around 50% of the group’s turnover
■ The majority of sales to the UK are oak
FIVE INTO ONE GO
The UK accounts for 50% of Normandy mill group NBE’s sales and business is still growing. Mike Jeffree reports
towards specialising in hardwood and particularly oak and we recognised there was real potential to develop this model of export business,” said Mr Corbière.
“While we all have our own local and national customers, we also work together on some projects in France and occasionally, on big or unusual orders, we’ll collaborate with other mills, too.”
Its UK business was central to NBE from the outset and over the years it’s grown exponentially. Today it has more than 30 long-term British customers. Some might take a couple of deliveries a year, others up to one a week and NBE is focused on full truck loads.
Above: Oak framing from Raison Bois
The group attributes its attraction to UK customers to its particular service and the fact it tailors products to their requirements. Geography no doubt also helps. Most orders are dispatched 10 days from receipt and trucks reach their UK destinations within 24-48 hours.
Also fundamental to NBE’s UK success, Mr Corbière acknowledges, is the historic British love affair with French oak.
Normandie Bois Entreprises is described as less of a partnership, more a family. The five hardwood producers it comprises each runs as a separate, independent business. But, at the same time, they co-ordinate under the NBE umbrella (
www.nbehardwoods.com), as they have for over two decades, allowing customers to tap into the resources of five mills through one central sales, marketing and distribution operation. “Having worked together over 25 years, we know each other’s business like our own, our different strengths and specialities,” said Vincent Corbière, owner-director of one of the mills, Corbière. “It’s a unique relationship which enables us to give customers a unique service; a range of products and the availability and flexibility a single mill would find hard to provide.”
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He added that, for most of NBE’s history, a large part of the export customers who have taken advantage of this service have been in the UK. In fact, its UK sales, primarily oak, now account for around 50% of the group’s total turnover of €12m. Meanwhile, cross-Channel demand is currently running at exceptional levels – on which more below. NBE traces its roots back to the late 1980s when 17 Normandy businesses got together to develop their exports. They included hardwood and softwood mills, pallet producers and forest managers supplying logs. One by one, however, the other businesses moved away, ultimately leaving the NBE five; Corbière, Raison Bois, Belleme Bois, Noel and Milcent, all of which are within 50 miles of one another. “As the years went by NBE moved more
“UK customers are familiar with it, they like the quality, the way it looks and works,” he said. “In fact, the British do more with French oak than the French do. Here uses include agricultural buildings, footbridges, decking and cladding. In the UK it’s used for some of these too but also much more extensively in construction and joinery.”
Principal NBE oak products selling in the UK include fresh sawn beams for various construction applications, kiln-dried boules for joinery, ripped to width SE, 27mm lumber for cladding, decking and flooring, plus 34mm, 54mm, 65mm and 80mm boards, also primarily for joinery. It offers second transformation items too, including frames, shingles and finger-jointed products. While the mills additionally process beech, chestnut, ash, red cedar and Douglas fir, NBE
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