About us
Our mission
After 30 years, we’re still learning about the timber industry. We see it having huge potential, greater now perhaps than at any time in its history given timber’s combination of technical performance and carbon and wider environmental benefits.
From the day-to-day business of the timber industry and trade, through to latest regulatory developments affecting the sector, government moves to advance it and the accelerating technical progress, the future of wood is becoming increasingly exciting.
The podcast features guests drawn from across the industry, plus end users, specifiers and technology and other suppliers to the sector to give you different perspectives and views.
And we want to share it with you – the good, the bad, the history, and the future.
Keith Fryer
Keith is Director of Business Development for Fort Merchanting, a larger regional provider of building materials, timber, fencing and landscaping solutions, based in Berkshire. He supports the timber industry through regular contributions to the Timber Trades Journal (TTJ), where he and Mike work together.
Keith was on the Board of the Timber Trade Federation (TTF), where he became Treasurer and then President in 2016, and the Board of the European Timber Trade Organisation, CEI Bois. He has also moderated the International Softwood Conference for 8 years.
His roles have all centred around the timber industry from working in the sheet materials sales department for J T Stanton & Co, to merchanting operations, then Regional Manager for Malden Timber. Keith has also been a Housebuilder Sales Director for Crosby Sarek, before running and selling a timber merchanting operation developed to supply the construction sector in Central London.
Mike Jeffree
Mike is a journalist by training. He started out in local daily newspapers then migrated into consumer, business and trade magazines. One of the latter was Timber Trades Journal (established 1873!) where he started out as freelance news editor in the 1990s.
In 2000, he became editor of the TTJ and has since specialised in reporting on the timber and forestry sectors worldwide.
Mike work has taken him to North America and South America, across Europe, to India, Africa and south east Asia. He reports on market trends, trade flows, regulation, technology and corporate news and has undertaken interviews in boardrooms, sawmills, merchants yards, on production lines and building sites and actually in forests, from the USA to Indonesia.
Mike remains TTJ Consultant Editor and, among others, also works for the European Timber Trade Federation and International Tropical Timber Organisation.