Softwood
A softwood parcel is priced on four numbers. Most enquiries arrive with two of them.
Species, grade, moisture content and section. Miss one and any price you are given is a guess dressed up as a quotation — and the difference between two adjacent appearance grades is routinely larger than the margin anyone is arguing over.
The programme
Whitewood, redwood, and the species people ask for by name.
Sawn softwood from European mills, kiln-dried where the grade requires it, in custom cross-sections, grades and lengths, in export packaging with grading documentation per parcel.
- Spruce — whitewood
- Picea abies. The volume species. Light, uniform, takes a coating well, moves less than pine in service. Construction sections, carcassing, packaging timber, formwork boards, joinery blanks.
- Pine — redwood
- Pinus sylvestris. Denser than spruce, higher resin content, and the species to specify where the timber will be pressure-treated — pine sapwood takes preservative and spruce largely does not. Joinery, external works, treated components.
- Fir
- Supplied where a mill programme runs spruce and fir together, or where a specification calls for it separately. Working properties sit close to spruce.
- Douglas fir
- Pseudotsuga menziesii. Heavier, stronger and more durable than spruce or pine, with a distinct grain that gets specified as much for appearance as for strength. Structural sections, exposed frames, cladding and decking where a naturally durable softwood is wanted.
Grading
Two grading systems, and they answer different questions.
Appearance grading says what the timber looks like. Structural grading says what it will carry. They are not interchangeable, they are certified differently, and buying one when you needed the other is the single most common way a softwood order goes wrong.
| System | Reference | What it declares | What it does not |
|---|---|---|---|
| Appearance grading | Nordic Timber Grading Rules (A/B/C/D, with A split into A1–A4) and EN 1611-1 (G4-0 to G4-3) | Knots, wane, resin pockets, distortion and surface condition — how the face will look and how much of the piece is usable. | Any load-bearing capacity. An appearance grade carries no strength class and cannot be substituted for one. |
| Structural grading | EN 14081-1 for CE marking; strength classes to EN 338; visual grades assigned to classes through EN 1912 | A declared strength class — C16, C18, C24 and upward — that an engineer can design against. | Appearance. A C24 piece can be knotty and ugly and still be C24. |
Ask for the one you actually need, and say so in the enquiry. If the timber is going into a structure, it needs to arrive CE-marked to EN 14081-1 with the strength class declared — a mill can only mark timber it has graded under that system, and it cannot be applied retrospectively to a parcel that left as appearance-graded goods. If the timber is going into joinery, packaging, formwork or fit-out, the appearance grade is the right specification and a structural grade is an expense you do not need.
Moisture
Twelve per cent at the mill is not twelve per cent in Jebel Ali.
Kiln-dried to 12% ± 2% is the standing specification, assessed against EN 14298, which is the standard that defines how drying quality is checked — mean moisture content of the consignment and the spread around it, not one reading on one board.
The spread is the part that matters and the part nobody asks about. A parcel with a mean of 12% and a tight distribution behaves. A parcel with a mean of 12% made up of boards at 8% and boards at 18% will move against itself after it is opened, and the mean on the certificate will still read 12%.
Then the timber travels. Wood is hygroscopic: it gives up or takes on moisture until it reaches equilibrium with the air around it, and it changes dimension while it does. A container crossing to the Gulf spends weeks in a sealed steel box that heats and cools daily, and condensation forms on the inside of the roof and drips onto the top of the stack. In an air-conditioned Gulf interior the equilibrium moisture content is lower than the European mill it came from; on an open site in summer it is different again.
Practical consequences, and we will say all three before you order rather than after:
- Specify the moisture for the end use, not the shipment
- Interior joinery in a conditioned building wants a lower target than construction timber for an open site. Ordering everything at one figure because it is the standing spec is how a joinery parcel ends up moving after installation.
- Acclimatise before working
- Timber wants time in the space it will live in before it is cut and fixed. This is the buyer's step, not ours, and skipping it is the most common cause of a complaint that gets attributed to the mill.
- Protect the stack on arrival
- Covered, off the ground, air able to move through it. A kiln-dried parcel left open in a monsoon or under a sprinkler is no longer a kiln-dried parcel and no certificate changes that.
Sections
Custom sections, and the tolerance nobody reads.
Cross-sections, lengths and grades are cut to the order. What is worth knowing before the order is written is that a softwood dimension is not a fixed number — it is a number at a stated moisture content, with a permitted deviation around it.
| Item | Reference | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Permitted dimensional deviations | EN 1313-1 | Sets the tolerance band for sawn softwood, and crucially states the reference moisture content the sizes apply at — 20%. |
| Structural sizes and deviations | EN 336 | Applies to structural timber, with tolerance classes T1 and T2. T2 is the tighter one and is what to specify where the timber is machined or jointed. |
| Drying quality assessment | EN 14298 | How the moisture content of the consignment is assessed, not just of a sample board. |
| Lengths | By order | Fixed lengths, length ranges or random lengths within a band. Random-length parcels are cheaper per cubic metre and more expensive per usable piece — which of those matters depends on your cutting list. |
Timber at 12% is smaller than the same timber at 20%. Sawn sizes under EN 1313-1 are stated at a 20% reference moisture content, and wood shrinks as it dries below fibre saturation. A section cut to nominal size and then kiln-dried to 12% will measure under nominal on arrival — correctly, and within the standard. If your specification calls for a finished size at a stated moisture content, say so in the enquiry: the mill cuts oversize to allow for it, and that is a decision made before sawing, not after delivery.
Origin and legality
European mills. No Russian or Belarusian wood, and we screen for it.
Timber is the one commodity family where the buyer's first question is where the log was cut, and it is the right first question. Two regimes now govern the answer and they are converging.
- Sanctions — and why the shipping route is not a defence
- UK sanctions prohibit the import of wood and wood-based products of Russian origin, including plywood and laminated wood under commodity code 4412, and the prohibition applies to goods that originate in, are located in or are consigned from Russia — so a parcel that arrives from a third country is not thereby clean. Transhipment through Central Asia and re-labelling at an intermediate mill are known enforcement concerns, and the penalties are criminal. The EU position is equivalent in effect. We do not source Russian or Belarusian wood, and origin is documented to the mill rather than to the port of loading.
- EUDR — deforestation-free, from 30 December 2026
- The EU Deforestation Regulation applies to wood and wood products placed on the EU market or exported from it. Application starts 30 December 2026 for large and medium operators and 30 June 2027 for micro and small operators — except micro and small operators already covered by the old EU Timber Regulation, who start on the earlier date. Compliance turns on a due diligence statement supported by geolocation data for the plots the wood was harvested from, a risk assessment and, where risk is not negligible, mitigation.
- What that means for a GCC delivery
- EUDR governs the EU market. A parcel shipped from a European mill to the Gulf is not placed on the EU market and the regulation does not attach to your purchase. It still matters, because the mills that will still be exporting comfortably in 2027 are the ones whose plot-level data chain is already built — and because if you later re-export into the EU, the data has to exist upstream or it cannot be reconstructed.
- Chain of custody
- FSC or PEFC chain of custody where the mill holds it and the parcel is sold as certified. Certification is claimed per parcel with the certificate number on the documents, or it is not claimed at all — we do not describe uncertified goods as coming from a certified mill.
Packing
Export packing, and the difference between ISPM 15 and a phytosanitary certificate.
These two get conflated in almost every enquiry, and they cover different things.
- ISPM 15 covers the packaging, not the cargo
- The international standard for wood packaging material — pallets, dunnage, crating, bearers — requires heat treatment or fumigation and the stamped mark. It applies to the wood your goods travel on. It does not certify the timber that is the goods.
- The cargo travels on a phytosanitary certificate
- Sawn timber crossing a border is a regulated plant product in most destinations, and the requirement — heat treatment, debarking, fumigation, an import permit, or a combination — is set by the importing country, not by the exporter. We confirm the destination requirement before shipment rather than discovering it at the port.
- Bundling and protection
- Strapped bundles on bearers, dimension and grade kept to a bundle, ends aligned, with plastic hooding or full wrap specified against the route and the season. A parcel is packed for the worst leg of its journey, which is usually the yard at the destination rather than the ship.
- Marking
- Bundle labels carrying dimension, grade, length, piece count and volume, and the parcel documentation reconciling to them. A bundle you cannot identify without opening it is a bundle that will be counted twice or not at all.
Straight answer
What it is not, said before you find out.
We are a merchant, not a sawmill, and being clear about what that does and does not give you is worth more than a claim we cannot stand behind.
- We do not control the log intake
- Grade recovery in any given month is a function of what the mill's logs actually yielded. We can hold a mill to a specification and we can have a parcel re-inspected; we cannot conjure a high-grade parcel out of a season that did not produce one. Where the market is short of a grade, we will tell you that rather than quote a number we cannot deliver against.
- An appearance grade is a judgement
- Written rules, applied by a person, at production speed. Disputes on appearance grading are settled by joint re-inspection against the rule, and the mechanism for that should be agreed in the contract before the goods ship, not invented after they land.
- Kiln-dried is a condition at a moment, not a property
- It describes the timber when it left the kiln. What arrives depends on the packing, the route, the season and how the parcel is stored after discharge. We will specify the packing for the route; the storage after discharge is yours.
- We will not sell appearance-graded timber into a structural application
- If it is carrying load, it needs a declared strength class, CE-marked to EN 14081-1, from a mill operating that system. Anyone offering you a “C24 equivalent” without the marking is offering you a description, and a description is not a declaration.
- Volume conventions differ, and they change the price
- Nominal versus actual, gross versus net of the tolerance, cubic metres calculated at which moisture content. Two quotations on apparently the same section can differ by several per cent on convention alone. We state ours, and we will read the other one for you if you are comparing.
How to specify
Eight lines, and we can price it properly.
- 1 · Species
- Spruce, pine, fir or Douglas fir — and say if the timber will be pressure-treated, because that decides the species on its own.
- 2 · Grade, and which system
- Appearance grade to a named rule, or a structural strength class. Not “good quality”.
- 3 · Section and length
- Cross-section, and whether lengths are fixed, banded or random. Say whether the size is required as sawn or as finished.
- 4 · Moisture content
- Target and tolerance, specified for the end use and the destination climate.
- 5 · Surface
- Sawn, planed, or planed on named faces. Planing changes the section, so it belongs with the dimension, not after it.
- 6 · Treatment
- Preservative treatment class, fire retardant, or none.
- 7 · Certification
- FSC or PEFC required, or not required. Say which, because it is priced differently.
- 8 · Destination and timing
- Port and country, so the phytosanitary requirement and the packing specification can be settled before the mill cuts rather than after.
Inspection
What we check, and what travels with the goods.
- Pre-shipment inspection
- Where the buyer requires it, an agency appointed for the consignment — SGS, Bureau Veritas or Intertek — instructed jointly, verifying species, grade against the named rule, sections and lengths, piece count and volume, moisture content by meter across the parcel, marking and packing integrity.
- Moisture verification
- Readings taken across the consignment rather than from one bundle, reported as a mean and a distribution, against EN 14298. A single figure with no spread is not a moisture report.
- Grade verification
- Against the rule named in the contract, with the sampling method and the pass criteria agreed in advance. The time to agree how a grading dispute is resolved is before there is one.
- Documentation per shipment
- Grading certificate or declaration per parcel; where structural, the CE marking and declaration of performance to EN 14081-1; kiln-drying certificate; phytosanitary certificate for the destination; ISPM 15 marking on packaging material; FSC or PEFC certificate and transfer document where the parcel is sold certified; packing list with bundle numbers, sections, lengths, piece counts and volumes; certificate of origin naming the mill; bill of lading; and the inspection report where an agency is appointed.
Straight answer
What we will tell you before you ask.
- That the origin question is now a compliance question
- Wood is the commodity where sanctions screening and deforestation rules meet. We source from European mills, document origin to the mill, and do not treat the port of loading as an origin.
- That appearance grade and strength class are not the same purchase
- Buying one when you needed the other is the most common failure on a softwood order, and it is not recoverable after the goods ship.
- That the moisture certificate describes the kiln, not the yard
- What arrives depends on packing, route and storage. We will specify the first two.
- That a random-length parcel is cheaper and may cost you more
- Per cubic metre against per usable piece. Which one matters depends on your cutting list, and we would rather ask than assume.
- That EUDR does not attach to a Gulf delivery — yet
- It governs the EU market. It still shapes which mills will be easy to buy from in 2027, and it cannot be reconstructed backwards if you re-export later.
Enquiries
Every enquiry is answered by the desk that handles it.
Send the product, quantity, delivery basis, destination and timing. We revert with availability, an indication and the documentation that accompanies it. Specifications are released once we know who we are speaking with.