Timber as a Global Commodity

Keith Fryer (T. Brewer & Co., Timber Merchants)

Timber is one of the oldest materials, used since the beginning of modern man’s development for a huge variety of buildings, tools, utensils, medicines and weapons. The affinity with timber has been there every step of the way as humankind has learned to use different species and parts of trees for specific purposes.

Even in very early times, timber has been engineered and crafted well beyond its basic lumber form to provide complex products, and this continues today, usually through the combination of timber and other materials, such as plastics and metals, to provide us with state-of-the-art items.

However, everything from the most humble piece of timber to the moulded acoustic shell of an in-car entertainment system starts in a forest. Timber is a global commodity which has one large advantage over its competitors: if managed correctly, there will be an endless supply, whereas the same cannot be said of its competing materials (oil, aggregates, steel, aluminium etc.).

Timber is the only sustainable building material that we have – it soaks up carbon dioxide as it grows and then locks it away until the end of its useful life, when it can be burnt to release energy for power.