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THE REAL WOOD GUIDE THE TIMBEER TRADE (UK) DEPENDENCE ON IMPORTS The UK imports more than 80% of its solid timber needs which arrive mostly as sawn timber, and as panel products like plywood, chipboard and various forms of fibreboard. The majority of UK companies handling wood rely on overseas sources and most of their supplies come from temperate countries. Hardly any UK timber companies have direct involvement in logging and processing within the overseas supplier nations.
The structure of the importing trade is not rigid. The link between overseas sources and the UK trade is the agent/broker. He is based in the UK and has detailed knowledge and experience of the supplier countries and mostly he represents specific timber producers. The agent is in constant touch with UK timber importers and reconciles the purchasing needs of importers and the selling needs of producers. He prepares the contract which is signed by both buyer and seller and provides other services. He works on a commission. Agents competing in the UK market represent various combinations of expertise in different wood products and different geographic wood sources. Some bigger groups combine the role of agent and overseas purchaser. They buy timber themselves to sell to UK importers. Traditionally the importer has the task of buying timber to hold in stock for other users. He irons out the seasonal and transport fluctuations which can occur in this international raw material trade. In this way he offers a more prompt and certain service to customers. The importer re-organises his imported stocks and may undertake some further manufacturing activities in order to meet his customers' needs. He sells mainly to commercial users like furniture makers and the construction industry. He also sells to the timber merchant who fulfills the distribution need for retail, as well as wholesale outlets. In practice the importers' and the merchants' roles are often combined, and larger groups may have their own networks of retail outlets. These channels handled some �1,676 million of timber products for the building and construction industry alone in 1989. The representative trade association for the importing companies in the UK is The Timber Trade Federation. SOURCES OF UK TIMBER Although forest resources in the UK are expected to provide larger harvests of timber in the years to come, they are unable to satisfy demand. Only about 16% of consumption of sawn softwood comes from domestic sources, about 25% of sawn hardwood and virtually no significant production of plywood. Developments in chipboard and MDF are making a greater contribution and at present the UK produces about 50% of its chipboard needs, and MDF capacity is growing. Nevertheless the UK relies on imports. Most imported timber comes in the form of coniferous sawn wood from countries which include Canada, the former USSR, Sweden and Finland as major suppliers. These four countries account for about 80% of UK softwood imports. The second biggest product group is that which utilises veneers in one form or another. Plywood, blockboard, related panels and veneers totalled 1.3 million cubic metres in 1989, of which it is estimated about 800,000 came from non tropical sources. Other panel products which include chipboard, hardboard, medium density fibreboard and softboard are all made from temperate timbers, mostly softwoods, and account for about 2.1 million cubic metres of imports. Temperate hardwoods like Oak and Beech account for some 300,000 cubic metres of imports and tropical sawn wood and logs for about 720,000 cubic metres. UK IMPORTS OF TROPICAL WOODS There are pressures on the forests everywhere in the world. In temperate areas there are anxieties about air pollution and about fire damage and environmental reconciliation. However, at the present time most attention is focussed on tropical forests and a major part of this leaflet is devoted to this subject. The 23 tropical forested nations who are members of the International Tropical Timber Organisation announced in May 1990 that they supported ITTO action plans leading to sustainable forest resources by the year 2000. ITTO member countries supplying wood to the UK in 1989 accounted for about 88% of UK imports from the tropics. Some tropical wood comes to the UK via Europe or through countries like Singapore and Taiwan which do not have their own tropical forests. It is estimated that these indirect imports exceed 10% of UK tropical wood arrivals. CONSUMER ANXIETY Specifiers and users in the UK want to know if countries or individual companies are operating sustainable systems of forest management which will ensure the existence of forest to provide future harvests of timber and other benefits. In this context they wish to know if a particular species comes from sustainably managed sources. There are calls for products made from tropical wood to be labelled as coming from sustainable forests. The assumption is that forests either are, or are not, being sustainably managed. These viewpoints do not recognise those countries which are actively endeavouring to improve forest management. The high levels of awareness of the need to safeguard future multipurpose forest resources have been created by pressures from environmental protection groups in the developed world. Their efforts are bearing fruit in that there are increasing indications from tropical countries of practical actions they are taking to improve management and to ensure permanent forested lands. Awareness is also well established within international agencies like the World Bank and the United Nations. Current worldwide concern is creating a faster and wider prospect of change and initiatives by Governments. The International Tropical Timber Organisation has initiated a number of approaches designed to assist the process. The Tropical Forestry Action Plan, which was co-ordinated by the Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and was in part inspired by the World Resources Institute, is an essential element in the co-ordination of plans for good forestry. During 1990 it has been closely examined to see in what ways it needs to be extended to cover the widest spectrum of interest. It is especially important that Governments create long term land use policies which will ensure the existence of permanent productive and protective forests in the face of pressures to clear more land to provide crops to feed rapidly increasing populations. Sustainability It is comparatively easy to create a broad definition of sustainability on the lines of �the needs of the present without jeopardising the needs of future generations�. In practice concepts of sustainability have to meet a varied list of expectations from a variety of groups whose special interests include biodiversity, wildlife protection, community rights, climate stabilisation, retention of vegetative cover for soil and water protection, the extraction of wood and other forest products, tourism and aesthetics. It is necessary to strive for patterns of land rights and of management and control which encompass these needs, so that they not only co-exist but may combine to offer enhanced economic and physical support to each other and gain greater acceptance by local populations. Until there are some internationally accepted guidelines on what constitute the elements of sustainability of forests, any attempts to label end products, whether undertaken by environmentalists or by the timber trade, is vulnerable to doubt and criticism. The ITTO, during 1 990, has been undertaking studies into incentives for improved forest management which, by their nature, should help establish the practicalities of labelling. The project evolved from an original proposal from the UK Friends of the Earth. The concept of sustainability could, for example, be seen as part of national policy where Government has calculated how much forest it needs for permanent protective and productive purposes and permits planned clearance of other areas of forest to meet other national requirements. Where sustainability is seen as the underlying management goal for a particular area of forest there are more specific management considerations. Professor Duncan Poore in his book �No Timber without Trees' says that under certain circumstances management may involve comparatively little intervention. He defines levels of management for productive forest as: "wait and see" - protect a forest from encroachment until it becomes worthwhile to manage it for timber production. "log and leave" - after logging prevent any encroachment and permit no further logging until the forest has recovered. "intervention" - after logging undertake forms of positive silviculture. If production of timber is to be genuinely sustainable, the single most important condition is that nothing must irreversibly reduce the ability of the forest to produce marketable timber. One of the foundations for managing a specific area is the definition of Annual Allowable Cut. On a broader scale the overall annual volumes of harvest should not exceed the annual growth added to the standing volume of trees in the forest. Typically, a square kilometre of West African rain forest can contain some 40,000 tree stems and saplings larger than ten centimetres in diameter. More than 85% of these are below the fifty to sixty centimetre minimum diameters of interest to those logging for timber. Felling and hauling logs damages some of this residual tree stock, and there is a need to improve harvesting techniques, but, left alone, the forest will recover. Removing big trees provides more light and space for them to grow. Management plans for forests in the tropics already include limitations on logging in vulnerable places affecting water supplies, local communities and steep hillsides. What is in sight now is the greater commitment to ensure that such policies are properly put into effect. Forest management has to be supervised by Government Forestry Departments whatever role is expected of commercial timber extracting companies, and Forest Departments themselves need to be motivated and fully backed by their Governments to ensure that future timber supplies are safeguarded.
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