There’s an extensive profile of our company in this month’s Building Design and Construction Magazine The article focusses on the sustainability of timber as a raw material the advanced processes at our sawmill including our state of the art timber treatment centre the lead we’ve taken in the supply of acoustic fencing panels Specifiers are… Read more »
Category: great british timber
Bishop’s Castle timber for a Bishop’s Castle school
Bishop’s Castle Community College is one of our home town’s most important assets and one which as a business we’ve been pleased to support over the years. Many of the team who work at the Mill attended the school, as have their children and in some cases grandchildren. We were especially pleased to help… Read more »
This is what we do…
When people new to sawmilling ask us what we do at Ransfords we have a standard answer which is perfectly demonstrated in this picture: we take round logs and turn them into rectangular-shaped lengths of timber. The trailer on the left has a nice load of 4.9m redwood logs from Savernake Forest to the south… Read more »
Many hands make light work
One of the benefits of being a family owned business is that we can be more flexible when it’s needed – especially when it comes to helping out one of the many local businesses we depend on to make our business work. Take last night when a late running wagon came into the yard with… Read more »
Ransfords from the air
One of things that visitors coming to the sawmill for the first time comment on is the sheer buzz of the place: there’s always something going on as the we take logs in, process them, and then send the finished timber products on their way. One important feature of that process is that nothing in… Read more »
The amazing Great British Timber maze
The keen reader of these news updates will recall that a while back we supplied Great British Timber from Ransfords to Farmer Teds’ Adventure Farm at Ormskirk in Lancashire. It’s good to learn that the timber is performing well and that despite the recent difficulties we’ve all gone through, the attraction has become a firm… Read more »
Even more (solar) power to our elbow!
Here’s a dramatic picture to start the week with. It’s taken on the roof of our Timber Treatment Centre where we are installing solar panels to add to the 2000 panels already installed on various buildings at our mill. The energy generated is used to power the mill. This means that the same solar energy… Read more »
A sight to gladden any mill worker’s heart
We joke in our sawmill that what we do is best summed up as taking round logs in and cutting them up to send square bits of timber out. Doing so efficiently and using the best equipment available lets us take huge pride in what is an essentially straightforward process. Making sure that none of… Read more »
There’s tidy for you
Many of our customers never get the chance to visit the mill (although those that do always enjoy the experience) so we like to post pictures from time to time to show how things are. These shots were taken from a cherry picker undertaking some maintenance work, Above we see the area around our Timber… Read more »
PPE storage for Llanidloes Ambulance Station
We were delighted to help out the Llanidloes Ambulance Station of the Ymddiriedolaeth GIG Gwasanaethau Ambiwlans Cymru (Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust) with this bespoke unit which is being used to store the team’s Personal Protective Equipment. According to the Trust the unit is already proving to be a vital piece of furniture within the… Read more »
When the cobbler’s busy…
…his childrens’ shoes have holes in them. It’s the same for us with fencing: we’ve been so busy making acoustic fencing panels for customers that it has taken us literally weeks to finally get round to making and installing the final section of fencing round our new Timber Treatment Centre. The fencing is designed to… Read more »
Keeping the family busy during lockdown: Ransfords style
These two members of the Evans family (owners of the sawmill) normally work at sister business Mellington Hall Hotel and Holiday Home Park. Alex came in for a day to cover holidays helping out at an extremely busy sawmill with some fork lift driving (for which he is fully trained) whilst his younger brother Sam… Read more »
The 1000th load goes into our Timber Treatment Centre
Just over a year since it became fully operational, this is the 1000th load of timber being sent into our new fully automated Timber Treatment Centre which is one of the most advanced of its kind in the UK. Built at a cost of £2.75 million, the new facility not only dramatically increases the efficiency… Read more »
The finished colour of treated timber
We’re often asked about the different colours of treated timber and these two packs illustrate things nicely. The posts in the two packs are of the same timber cut the same day but treated two weeks apart. The pack on the left goes a warm honey colour in the sun exactly as it is supposed… Read more »
Within sight of our sawmill and home town
Here’s another sight to lift the spirits. It’s taken at Bury Ditches, home to one of the best-preserved hill forts in the country which dates from around 500BC. It’s located within sight of the mill, deep in the beautiful Shropshire hills. Bishop’s Castle and the Mill are at bottom left, then following the hills round… Read more »
The new chip store is working exactly as it’s designed to
In order to better manage the peaks and troughs in demand for woodchips we’ve constructed a new store here at our mill in Bishop’s Castle. These two pictures show it in operation with a chipper outside working on undersized logs and feeding chips into the store. You can see the operation in a video clip… Read more »
Air dried Larch
Here’s another benefit to increased storage capacity at our mill: 3.6m larch boards kept in the dry ready and waiting for swift delivery. Larch of course is incredibly durable and has become very popular for use as cladding as well as being a traditional material for fencing. Delivered in bundles of 160, there’s plenty more… Read more »
All chip-shape and Bristol fashion
It’s a process of constant improvement here at Ranfords both in how we mill and treat the timber and how we make certain that we get the most value out of every bit iof timber we handle. This newly completed chip store (complete with Great Brtish Timber Yorkshire Boarding) means we can store more material… Read more »
Frosty morning, Bishop’s Castle
We count ourselves most fortunate to live and work in such beautiful surroundings, never more so than on mornings like this. Here in Bishop’s Castle it’s bright and sunny with the air like Champagne. The biomass boiler and kilns in our mill are steaming away and after what at times was a stormy week all… Read more »
Keeping the noise down for the neighbours
Our business is in a small town which has grown and spread in recent years so that houses now stand quite close to the sawmill (which has been here for well over 100 years!) in what once were fields. We are keen to minimise the impact of our activites on our neighbours so, the new… Read more »