Good morning,
What a wonderful, crisp morning it is out there!
Today I'm going to explain why I import my firewood from Latvia and not from forests just a few miles away.
I'm very much a believer in world trade, and every country has a specialist export. It just so happens that Latvia is very good at growing trees; it has millions of them in mature, dense forests that, in theory, can't ever run out or can have a detrimental impact on the landscape, simply because there are more trees than people and more forests than open land. The replanting scheme is so great that the trees replanted 20 years ago are still yet to be harvested.
Just as we found out at the beginning of the war that Ukraine was one of the biggest exporters of grain, Latvia and the neighbouring countries are huge exporters of firewood to the UK. Up to 70% of all raw wood materials in the UK are imported, hence why building materials and firewood prices went through the roof a couple of years ago when supplies were constrained.
So what about the UK for wood supplies?
Well, first off, we don't grow them very well; the growth is irrational; they come with lots of branches, and quite simply, we don't have the room to satisfy the market to be truly sustainable. Traditionally, we are an agricultural country, not a forestry country.
All the thousands of tonnes of timber we had in the trees were lost on building ships from 1790 for the following 50 years, and have never recovered since.
As log suppliers, we are very fussy about what wood it is, the size, and the price.
So the foresters have two choices: supply who we want it as cheap as possible and complain that it's not the right size or shape, or we take it to a biomass supplier, where they just tip it down a chute to be turned into wood pellets and get paid the market value price with no hassle.
The number of British firewood suppliers is shrinking, and in my opinion, there are only a few years left as the supply simply isn't there anymore.
In Latvia, they grow very straight with very few branches and are processed easily with little waste, and best of all, they stack perfectly in my wheelie bins!
Above is a picture of the site in Latvia where the firewood comes from. If you look closely, you can see the scale of the wood around the site and how much is ready for processing. I doubt we have that much in the entire south of England!
So that's it for this part. I'm out delivering today, Sunday, the 15th, so get your order in!
Love Alan.
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