HOME - ABOUT ASHS
ASHS is a cooperative of small and medium sized businesses, supplying Scottish hardwood and premium softwood timber products to the UK market place
It also hosts an associate membership consisting of oak framers, tree surgeons, architects, furniture makers, farmers, land-owners, and other industries involved to some degree or another within the Scottish Timber industry.
Our key objectives:
To promote and increase marketplace awareness of locally grown, sustainably sourced timber - especially hardwoods.
To bring back the culture of sourcing locally grown timber and timber products from your local small sawmill.
To represent and support small Scottish timber businesses.
From woodland creation to final specificiation
Another of our objectives is to encourage all sectors to work together, from woodland creation through to final specification. By so doing we can encourage interest in growing and managing broadleaf woodlands, which are full of biodiversity and provide landscape amenity with beautiful places for walking and recreation.
Better utilising the timber resources that Scotland has to offer reduces our reliance on imports and the associated energy costs to the environment, and adds value to a local natural resource which is retained in the local economy.
It will also provide jobs in wood processing, furniture making and forestry.
As a cooperative the ASHS group work together to offer support and regular training events to our members.
We also link up with other people who appreciate and are inspired by Scotland's native hardwoods and support the creation of new woodlands as well as the sustainable and productive management of Scotland's existing forest resource.
Most people are not aware that Scotland produces hardwood of quality and character, which is suitable for use in building, furniture-making, and in the craft sector.
Lack of knowledge about Scottish hardwood is a significant obstacle: it means that Scottish hardwood is often not specified in appropriate situations and customers buying, for example, items of furniture are not aware that furniture is even made from locally grown wood.
How we started
A History of Hardwoods in Scotland
Scotland used to have a thriving hardwood industry – largely because hardwoods were in high demand for the mining and ship building industries, where they were used to make pit props, dunnage and bearers. The decline of heavy industry in Scotland had a knock-on effect on the hardwood industry which saw a dramatic decrease in demand.
At around the same time, demand for hardwoods in the UK’s indigenous furniture making industries was also falling due to the increased popularity of imported flat-pack furniture.
By the 1990s, it was estimated that only a tiny proportion of Scotland’s hardwoods were being used, and of the best of these that did make it to market, 95% of them were exported as low value round timber with all the value adding benefits of processing and product creation happening elsewhere - with the added irony that a proportion would come home again as finished timber or timber products, at many times the value than it left at.
In this climate a handful of small sawmillers came together at the end of the 1990’s to see what could be done about this.
With support from the Scottish Forestry Commission (now Scottish Forestry) - ASHS was the result.
We have since grown from six members to over 100 (including Associates), and the above trend of low utilisation and low value export is in reverse!
We still have lots of room for growth and for new members as this new Scottish Hardwood industry has huge potential and a long way to go.
We would like to see a return to the model of many small and local sawmills - similar to that still seen in much of Europe and Scandinavia, where almost every community has its local sawmill, and where the culture is still to pop along and source your timber requirements from these.
