PRODUCTION MILESTONE . . . Keith Corbett, managing director of Hunter Wilson and Clifford Jones Timber, with the 50 millionth fence post
Hunter Wilson and Partners, which is the country’s biggest producer of wooden fence
posts, has just cut and trimmed the landmark post from a length of spruce.
Ten years ago parent company Clifford Jones Timber bought the border site, located near Rigg, which has given them extra production capacity and closer proximity to Scotland’s forests and markets.
And 64 staff now operate from the company’s two sites – the other which is in Ruthin, Wales – and produce around four million fence posts a year.
Clifford Jones Timber chairman Alan Jones, whose father founded the company as a timber haulage business in 1947, said: “Every piece of timber that comes through our gates in Gretna or in Ruthin is used. There isn’t any wasted and there aren’t many industries that can say that.”
As well as fence posts, they also make laminated timber for the building and leisure industries and other by-products go to make biomass boiler pellets for renewable heating systems, bedding for horses, cat litter, wood briquettes and timber furniture.
Their fence posts are used for security fencing at several solar parks across the UK and line major roads and railway lines, while they also make specially treated fence posts which carry a 25-year guarantee.
Every year a consignment of 4000 fence posts are also shipped to the Falkland Islands to help keep the islanders’ half a million sheep from straying.
