For the DIYers and garden enthusiasts on social media, you may have seen memes like these ones:

All credit goes to the creators.

All credit goes to the creator.

Throughout the past decade, we are dealing with timber shortage. With the amount increasing each year, factors such as demand and climate change are huge factors. With the winters becoming warmer, forest grounds are staying wet and muddy causing difficulty with collecting timber and maintaining safety standards.
However this year there’s a slight difference- With some additional causes of the timber shortage.

Covid-19

The lockdown and policies brought to protect everyone during the Covid caused a lot of disruptions for many businesses, timber milling included. Most factories and timber mills were running at 50% to be able to keep running while making it safe for their employees, some factories closed during this period and are either starting to reopen or remain closed.

There was also a big trend during the national lockdowns, a lot of people dove into hobbies and projects. This includes gardening, DIY, baking and more. Which led peoples free time into tending their garden, growing plants and even building garden offices to be able to work from home, but still have a little peace.
These trends, the decrease in the timber workforce as well as transportation restrictions from closed borders all have contributed to this high demand, low supply shortage within the timber industry.
This also explains long delivery times you may find across many companies, unfortunately it is out of our control, but all parties within the timber product chain are now working as hard as they can to catch up to demand.

However, there is also another large factor to take into consideration for this years timber shortage..

The Biden Plan

With the introduction of the newest president of the United States of America, along came new ideas and plans to build a new infrastructure to support the future of the country.
How does this relate to timber? Well, a major part of the Biden Plan is to contribute trillions of dollars to upgrading, building and weatherising buildings. All which is great news, until it comes to the nitty gritty.
As mentioned above, Covid-19 took a large hit in the timber and milling industry- This also applied to Canadian millers, who before the pandemic were the American’s main supply of timber.

The solution to this, is for the timber to now be sourced from Europe, buying for up to double than what Europe wants to. China has also been purchasing timber at a higher price, to the point where a benchmark of 4×2 softwood product rose by 149% in price over the past year. Meaning that for european companies who don’t want to significantly raise the consumer price of their product, are now further down the buyers chain.
You can see how this now adds a domino to the current situation, while things are beginning to pick up again in the UK as we ease out of lockdown, some industries still have some time to catch up until things are running as before.

While this post was to share and explain some memes we’ve come across. We also want to use this to help our current and possible future customers understand what is happening with orders.

For those who have placed an order, rest assured we know your order and know what our backorders are.
The Tuin and Tuindeco team are working as hard as they can to handle the situation, however there is only so much we can do and provide given the current situation.

Now for some final points to wrap things up, we do thank you for your understanding during this process.

• If you are holding on placing an order due to the hope lower prices. Unfortunately this will be unlikely for a while during this shortage.
• Lead times listed on the website are based on current forecasts, these may change with short notice. We work on updating the website as soon as we receive an update, but please don’t shoot the messenger..
• Our staff have no control over the current timber shortage in Europe and the delays in receiving stock. We understand that this is a frustrating situation but please try and be civil.
• We will not request payment until your order is ready and secured for delivery.
• If the delays are too long for you, you can cancel by emailing in to info@tuin.co.uk – We understand if you decide to cancel your order.

For more information, please read this article from the BBC on the current timber shortage. As well as this article written after Travis Perkins warning on this shortage of materials.