General Information on Beacon Forestry
and the service it provides

1. Background

Beacon Forestry was formed in 1995 to bring the benefits of electronic trading to the UK forestry sector for the first time. Since then we have held monthly sales of standing and felled round timber continuously, selling over £16 million worth of hardwood and softwood timber.

Beacon Forestry is a privately owned firm with offices in England and Scotland. For details on the Beacon Forestry Partners and the location of their offices please click here

Our clients include individual woodland owners, estates, syndicates, trusts, pension funds, investment companies, management companies, consultants, local authorities, The Woodland Trust, The National Trust and the Forestry Commission.

The monthly sales are operated in accordance with an industry-wide agreed Practice Standard. The standard sets out how electronic timber sales should be conducted in the UK. The bodies involved in this landmark agreement were the Forestry Commission, UKFPA, FTA (formerly TGA) and Beacon Forestry.

2. How the system operates

Vendors enter timber parcels into advertised monthly auctions or tender sales. Beacon Forestry publish a sales catalogue 6 weeks before each sale so that prospective purchasers have the opportunity to view the lots on offer. Buyers can download catalogues from the website or have them sent by post. Beacon Forestry maintain a comprehensive database of all UK timber buyers and we pride ourselves in actively matching lots with buyers we know will be interested. We use email, post and telephone to notify buyers of forthcoming lots likely to be of interest.

The sales take place on the last Wednesday of each month starting at 1400hrs.In addition  we hold bespoke sales for the three Forest Enterprise country territories. The sale dates are advertised in our annual sales calendar.

The sales are conducted in a competitive and professional manner using the internet and Beacon’s propriority software.

 Live on-line auctions allow buyers to bid against each other in real time from their own offices, each buyer having the same opportunity to better the last bid via their computer. When bidding is exhausted the auctioneer compares the last bid with the vendors’ reserve and declares the lot sold or unsold on the screen before moving on to the next lot. A tender sale differs from an auction in that interested buyers submit one closed offer which must be with Beacon by the advertised deadline. When the deadline arrives we pass details of all offers to the vendor for consideration.

For timber buyers without access to a computer we provide facilities  for bidding by post fax and telephone.

After the sale we are happy to offer the services of our experienced and skilled negotiators for any lots which may fail to reach the reserve price. On the conclusion of a successful sale we send out sale advice notes to both vendor and buyer confirming the sale and an invoice for a deposit. Once we receive the deposit we deduct our agreed sales commission and pass the balance to the vendor.