National Hickman

“Energy policy needs to change” The message from supply partner Norbord was given extra weight when the world’s leading panel manufacturer hosted a conference for industry heavyweights and key MPs at The House of Commons.

The Make Wood Work campaign, backed by Norbord and National Hickman, was given important support when a host of the most influential and powerful senior executives in the timber sector alongside leading national housebuilders came together at The House of Commons on June 15th 2011.

The campaign highlights the seriously negative impact biomass subsidies given to electricity generators through the Renewables Obligation Policy will have on wood panel manufacturers, engineered timber system companies, the entire housebuilding sector and all other wood processors, distributors and end users.

There is not enough wood available in the UK to support the number and scale of biomass electricity plants that are being processed for development.

The joint presentation to the conference by Tom Bruce Jones, Joint Managing Director of James Jones and Sons and Karl Morris, Managing Director of Norbord Europe provided hard evidence of the substantial risk to the future viability of the wood processing industries in the UK created by current and proposed legislation for renewable energy.

The conference guests signed an open letter to Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change which outlined the unintended consequences of current energy policy. A copy of that letter is available here.Some of those unintended consequences have been hitting this sector throughout 2011 in the guise of unprecedented price increases and material shortages.

The August raw materials update is again forced to report even more substantial price hikes to raw materials including TG4, MDF, OSB and some specifications of softwood. Most manufactures have already announced a double digit increase for calendar Q4 and are warning that without change to Government energy policy continued subsidy of biomass would push the cost of timber and wood based panels even higher throughout 2012.

National Hickman has committed supply lines through the remainder of 2011 and all of 2012. We believe security of supply is always critical but in a recovering market the entire supply chain through to end user should be certain of picking the right partners.