Greek Hardwood Timber Project
by Charlotte Dawson, MICFor, Economics Projects Manager, The Silvanus Trust
The first thing I have learned is that Greek forestry workers have certain key characteristics in common with their English counterparts - they are all a thoroughly miserable lot! (I have also learned that there isn’t a word in Greek for "depression" - this does not stop them suffering from it!). Many problems here are familiar to us in the UK: - An ageing workforce, with forestry attracting few young people, it being considered hard work and poorly paid. - Problems of terrain that make motor manual work in Cornwall look like a kiddies’ picnic. Last week, I was looking at a beech thinning site in the mountains that was so steep, I resorted to going down it backwards! - Seasonal issues - winter weather being more extreme than the UK; (you really can’t work in a Greek downpour) and summer being punishingly hot.
In these circumstances finding out what the Greeks are doing right is a bit like drawing teeth - they much prefer to have a good moan!
Main points of interest so far gleaned are however:
1. The firewood market is exceptionally buoyant. Very high volume firewood sales, estimated at 1500% higher than in the UK - i.e. over 50 times more per capita, as Greece has a population of approx. ten million - at very variable prices ranging to €30-€100/m3 delivered in (raw vol. measurement). (The cost of living/wages in Greece is lower than the UK, but if you reckon on €1 being equivalent to £1, it gives a fair comparison). Firewood is sold green, thus reducing pressure on storage and avoids tying up capital. (I don't suggest we try this in the UK). The income support from firewood sales is vital for other forest products.
2. Other small diameter products, (e.g. bean poles, round wood for fencing, rustic buildings etc.), are gleaned from thinning work. Far more timber generally is extracted than from a UK thinning operation. (Fire hazard from brash is an environmental incentive to do this). I find these 2 points interesting because: Conventional wisdom in forestry has always been that small diameter products are uneconomic. It seems to me that the Greeks, by getting maximum value out of a thinning operation, may have found a valuable approach. Many costs of harvesting are fixed - e.g. transport of forwarder etc. to site. Further, it probably does not take significantly more time to brash a branch to make a bean pole/rustic pole, than to cross cut it to waste. The forest floor after thinning operations is cleaner and the forest more quickly accessible for recreation, (and other non-timber uses).
3. Co-operative working. Workers are organised within teams within a fairly small geographical area. These teams work on a co-operative basis, with cutters either being multi-skilled and working the timber themselves in unfavourable weather, or cutting specifically for another member of the co-operative. Foresters I have talked to have been shocked that we do not have such a system in the UK, and have asked me how the cutters produce the correct spec. for the end use. (The answer is, of course, that we waste a huge amount of valuable but non standard timber).
For example, pinus halepensis has a habit of losing the leading shoot; (yes, I know this is a softwood example, but bear with me). When a side shoot takes over as the leader, this produces a curved stem. These curved timbers are especially value for boat building and are sorted out by the cutters.
This point is interesting because: The same skills could be applied to hardwood timbers, especially oak, where curved piecesare valuable for use in greenwood buildings. I know few cutters, (and indeed foresters, who would be doing the marking), in England, with sufficient knowledge of the potential end uses, to be able to select out such stems, which would normally be dismissed as useless rubbish and chucked on the firewood heap.
Short length timber - cutters also select out short saw logs. Customers often do not need 2m sawn lengths. Local small scale processing enables recovery of good quality smaller lengths outside the standard sizes prescribed by the mills.
This is also a training issue.
Marketing: |
The Greeks don’t understand marketing in the same way as the English, but they have VERY strong sense of region:
They wish to buy local products wherever possible; (our landlord told us off for not buying the local brand of milk). This applies equally to timber - your carpenter can tell you where his piece of chestnut has come from and it is an issue of regional pride - this is something we need to build on far harder in the UK - not is it certified from Scandinavia (or even Indonesia) but is it from Cornwall? !
Making things easy for the customer: The fireplace shop is next door to a firewood merchant - not difficult, but we don’t do it in the UK.The "koinotita" - this is the most wonderful institution. Basically a local council, it knows everyone and makes it its business to oil the wheels of the supply chain. Thus, if you want a wood product you can go to the koinotita and they will put you in touch with someone (or in the case of firewood, arrange delivery for you). This is an Agenda 21 issue and is something that could be taken up by local councils in the UK. It’s all very well district councils having a local purchasing policy, but they could have double the impact if they acted as an information hub for local products as well.
If Local Authorities are for some legal reason unable to perform this role, Enterprise Agencies would be well placed to step in. Most EAs are partly funded by the relevant Local Authority for business promotion work.
There is a general understanding that wood is good - this is something that has been forgotten in the UK and we need to work on.
Finally, I’m afraid, a dig at the forestry industry - use of sawn hardwood in construction is huge here. This ranges from tough wood - used as supplementary scaffolding, shuttering etc. - to medium quality hardwood (mainly chestnut, but also oak) for beams (where stress grading isn’t an issue - e.g. in sheds, conservatories etc.), door frames, doors etc. In the UK, most of this would be imported pressure-treated softwood. The insistence of the forestry and construction industries that hardwood is a quality product (when often it is not) has priced us out of the market.
We do not seem to have the concept of an interim value product; (hardwood is used either for firewood, or for high quality joinery, but little in between). We look to add a lot of value, not some value - but low quality sawn timber is more valuable than firewood, if less valuable than high quality. This is something we need to look at.
