Laversdale Invests for the Future
Cumbrian firm Laversdale Timber has made some significant upgrades to its operations in recent months with a new timber treatment plant, post pointing line and incising machinery.
Founded in 1999, this family-run business has bases in Carlisle, close to the airport, and the Wallace Lane Sawmill at Brocklebank near Wigton with the new additions already boosting efficiency, safety, capacity and productivity according to General Manager Harry Robinson.
“The incorporation of this new machinery and a revamped treatment plant are helping to increase our output and enhance quality for our growing list of customers from across the UK.
“We’ve had 13 years of solid growth and 2026 is looking like another positive year so the time seemed right to invest a considerable sum in our ongoing expansion.
“Our old treatment plants were bought and installed second hand on a budget when we set up in 1999. They had some very heavy use and it’s fair to say they needed replacing! The new plant is 18.5m long with a diameter of 1.8m and can process loads of up to 15m³ using the green, two-part, Koppers-supplied Celcure C65 solution.
“When combined with our incising line, it allows us to offer customers a highly dependable UC4i 15-year warranty. Our warranty will be fixed for the 15 years of service. It’s not a sliding scale warranty like most others offer that only pays back a fraction of the cost if there’s a failure. We can offer this warranty without any hesitation because we are confident in the longevity of our fencing products.
“Our new treatment plant is more user-friendly and a better system all round when compared to what we had before.
“The new post pointing line took a couple of years to develop and was a tricky project to complete. Due to the nature of our fencing all being peeled, not machine round, it makes any kind of automation difficult because no two pieces of timber are exactly the same. It’s fully bespoke, delivers a more consistent finish and crucially reduces the strain on our staff.
“It gives us the ability to produce up to 17,000m³ per annum, which isn’t bad for a small family firm like ourselves.
“We did look at going down the route of also producing machine round posts however we find most still prefer the peeled product due to its undoubtably superior strength over the machine rounds.
“Our Excalibur incising machinery, supplied by Tweddle Engineering, is just about to go online,” added Harry, son of founder Garry Robinson.
Laversdale supplies trade, agricultural and retail customers with a range of fencing systems, gates, ironmongery, wire products and roofing materials with around seventy per cent of their business focused on timber yards, builders’ merchants, landscapers and many contractors across England and Scotland.
Harry went on:
“I think contractors favour us as a supplier compared to others because we’re easy to deal with, competitively priced and high on quality. We also keep very high stocks of such a wide range of products so its rare we’ll have run out of what someone needs.”
The company sources all of its sawn products from UK sawmills as well as round posts from the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine.
“We’re geared up for the future now,” concluded Harry “but are always on the lookout for ways to improve our business. That has been the Laversdale way since day one!”
Tel: 01228 573503
