Sustainability is important to us as a company.
We are proud to be manufacturing products from sustainable timber.
We are committed to making the best use of the resources available and with timber this involves four major processes;
Forestry – growing timber absorbs carbon dioxide fixes the carbon and releases the oxygen. As the trees die and decay the process is reversed. It is therefore important to harvest the trees for timber products to prolong the carbon fixing.
Sawmilling – sawing the trees into timber products fixes the carbon for the life of that product in fencing or building timbers.
Recycling – Sawn timber products can often be recycled into chipboard where the carbon remains fixed for another period.
Power – Chipboard products can then be used for generating heat and power finally releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere. The growing forest will again fix the carbon completing the cycle.
The objective is to keep the environment in balance and this principle permeates through many of our policies and actions.
The sawmill was designed to suit the locally available round timber supply. This is sources as locally as possible, mainly within the South West of England.
All trees we receive are fully converted into products such as sawn timber, woodchips, sawdust and firewood. These all have a useful (local) market.
Timber is purchased on a sustainable basis and we are certified PEFC (CATG-PEFC-136). We are also able to buy locally but many small woodland owners are unable to afford the Certification costs but it is essential to make best use of all our resources. In such cases we ensure that it is sustainable with correct felling licenses.
We use minimal packaging ob our products. Employees are encouraged to be environmentally sensitive recycling paper, cardboard and plastic wherever possible.
Our usage of fossil fuels is being reduced and minimised wherever possible with biomass heating being used with in the workshop. Recently we have invested in a 350 KWp solar panel system which will generate around 35 percent of the business’s energy each day, with predicted future cost savings in excess of a million pounds, as well as a reduction of around 1,400 tonnes of carbon over the next twenty years – the equivalent of powering 1,750 homes for a year.