It breaks my heart that I need to start my monthly brief with the devastating news of the sudden passing of Claire Hoatson, wife of Sean Hoatson, on the evening of Saturday 22 June. Claire leaves her husband Sean, sons Nathan and Joshua and daughter Becks.
A touching memorial service was held on Friday 28 June, and judging from the number of people in attendance, it is clear that Claire was an active and valued member of the Midlands community. It has been an extremely sad week for the sawmilling industry, and our hearts not only go out to her immediate family, but also Tekwani, a family-run sawmilling business, one of the largest and most respected sawmilling enterprises in the country.
On a more positive note, we hosted our AGM on 12 June. It was a most successful event held at the Future Africa conference facility on the campus of the University of Pretoria.
This year we broke with the tradition of having one keynote economy-focused speaker to have four insightful presentations by experts in the field of wood technology and the use of timber in the built environment.
Prof. Brand Wessels of Stellenbosch university and Dr Johann van der Merwe of the University of Pretoria both shared some of the incredible work that is happening in their respective academic institutions to educate the younger generation about the wonder of wood!
One of Johann’s Master’s students Mishau Azar presented some incredible projects that he and his peers have been working on while Marcus van der Hoven of Mass Timber Technologies inspired the room with how MTT uses digitisation to bring timber architects to life, as well as some key statistics around the potential for timber construction in South Africa.
Listening to these young men was like a breath of fresh air and it was most encouraging to those of us in the sawmilling sector as we are looking to find increased marketing opportunities for our product.
This is in stark contrast to how we felt after the 2022 AGM when we were addressed by the leading economist Dawie Roodt – his outlook was not a pretty one.
The advance towards mass timber engineering and use certainly seems to be the future for the formal mills in our sector and would seem an opportunity to break with lower grade products like WOS.
Other interesting news are the increase in numbers of people making use of the WoodApp and attending the Talking Timber webinars. We seem to be moving in the right direction and expect this to show positive influence on future sales.
Lastly, after a four-year long battle with the (now former) Minister of Trade and Industry they have finally agreed to award SAFCOL B-BBEE facilitator status. This is good news for sawmills who purchase logs from SAFCOL.
As usual don’t forget to keep Cutting Straight and drying flat.
Until next month
Cheers,
Roy Southey
Executive Director: Sawmilling South Africa
