MERCHANT FOCUS
90 YEARS YOUNG M
Mid Sussex Timber may be celebrating its 90th anniversary this year, but it has a much younger outlook than its age might suggest, as Fiona Russell Horne finds out.
ore than timber and not just in Sussex. That’s how Mid Sussex Timber managing director Tim Waters describes the family-run company that’s based in the Sussex village of Forest Row, in the heart of the Ashdown Forest. Like many merchants of its type, the company was initially set up because Waters’ grandfather was a builder who required a building materials supplier, so his son set one up. That was in 1929. A 90th Anniversary party was held at Lingfield Park Racecourse earlier in the year for staff and customers. The business has now grown from one branch in East Grinstead via a site at Haywards Heath, acquired in 1933 and the current main branch at Forest Row in 1966. This is the company’s largest branch so became the MST head office a few years later. “In the early days we operated a bespoke joinery department from the East Grinstead branch,” Waters says. Mainly operating in the London market, the department once made the first radio booth in the House of Commons when Parliamentary proceedings began to be broadcast in the 1970s. As the market changed and more mass produced joinery began to be popular, the department was closed in the late 1980s and the area changed to a showroom. A fourth branch joined the family in the mid-
22
“Transport and stock all come from Forest Row, so if Crowborough or East Grinstead does a big ticket out of their own branch the lorry or the van will come from Forest Row because that’s where they are held overnight. That said, because all of the branch stock has come from Forest Row in the first place, a big order may just come from here anyway. There’s no point in depleting Crowborough’s stock levels if we are just going to replace it from Forest Row anyway and it would diminish Crowborough’s ability to service smaller orders in the meantime.”
1990s, when MST bought another family-run firm, Ballards Timber in Crowborough, at the back end of the early 1990s recession when the owner decided to sell up and retire and wanted to ensure it remained as a Timber company rather than going for development. “We operate the branches rather like a hub-and-spokes,” says operations director Alex Waters, Tim’s son, and part of the third generation of Waters to work in the business. Tim’s brother Simon is Sales Director and Simon’s daughter Cara is also fully involved.
One of MST’s benefits for customers is in the flexibility it can offer in terms of the variety of non-standard sizes and lengths of timber. “We do buy a lot of Timber that we could saw in the mill here into standard sizes. We can also saw it and pressure treat it here to non-standard sizes that not everyone else will stock,” Alex Waters says. “Nothing is wasted here because it all has a value, whether it’s sawdust or shavings for horse bedding, even bags of kindling or pellets for bio-mass. Everything that we cut has a use beyond here. That’s the joy of the material that we work with; you never stop learning about the many many ways it can be used.” Timber, however, is only part of the story. They also sell bricks, blocks, insulation, aggregates. From the digging of the hole to putting the foundations in, way up to the last tile on the top of the roof, including the guttering, underground drainage and Insulation. “We can offer all that,” Waters says. “To be fair, we haven’t actively done
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net December 2019
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
