Size. There are a whole range of different clefts. This is a letter that we as suppliers got regarding 2015 orders. I have enclosed this so you may get some understanding to what we as makers have to deal with. Junior clefts will be made from willow that has to have faults cut out and so won't make an adult size cleft or have bits missing out of them.
Dear Customer,
Firstly I apologise again for the lack of supplies in top and some middle grades this year but there is very little I can do about tree quality plus the fact we have had major floods and a lot of storm damage where we have lost many of our good trees for the next few years. I can assure you it is affecting us as regards turnover, profits and customer satisfaction just as much as yourselves, you can be sure you are all getting treated fairly.
It is that time of year again when we release the prices for 2015 so you can sort out the pricing and details you need for you brochures and customers in 2015.
We have had increased different grades by different rates to reflect the demand, supply and availability so there is not a general % rise over every grade. I appreciate some of you would rather have that but with us producing so many Vellum Mens these days and demand for these not being that good we wanted to put these up far less than other grades, which we have done, we have put the Grade 1 and 1B up by the highest percentage for the opposite reason. We are still getting far too many lower grades although from September 2014 deliveries onwards you will see more upper grades as the timber quality has improved the last two months, I hope it continues but I have my doubts.
Costs continue to escalate in the UK and we are having to start a pension for all our employees in 2015 and many of our suppliers are having too as well for their employees so this puts prices up by 1.5% immediately, without any other general raw material and cost increases, this is set to increase over the coming years I am afraid. As usual the government does not worry how business is going to fund this new system, they just bring it in as a law.
The tree price continues to rise sharper than it should which is due to competitors of ours having not planted enough of their own trees in previous years, the trees that most of our competitors plant are of poor quality and would not even make our grade 2 tree in the planting season. They are bidding for ours trees that we have nurtured and developed by simply offering more money. In a lot of cases money is all the grower is worried about. They forget about the service and quality of the replanting scheme we give that far outweighs anything anyone else can do. So we are having to pay more for trees which is as always passed on to the final consumer.
Production has not been what we expected this year, due to both the very wet weather in the winter but also due to the hurricane force wind that went through areas of England in October 2013, you may have seen the photos on our Facebook page. We have lost literally thousands of trees and are still clearing them up now and burning on site anything that is obviously wind damaged. Even if we are unable to spot it you should to be prepared for some coming through the production but it will be nothing like the number in 1987 when we did not know what to look for. I have rejected some 600 sawn blades so far and we have a heap of trees in the yard that are just being used for products other than clefts, so I can assure you we are taking the matter most seriously. Incidentally our competitors are not being as careful and are processing storm damaged trees, it is not just us who were affected. We have also been felling this month in flood hit areas from last winter and the ground is still very wet believe it or not.
I have started taking orders for 2015 but currently all we are prepared to offer is the same number and grades that you ordered in 2014, but if you have cancelled any deliveries or reduced your numbers the final reduced quantity delivered will be put down as your order and not the order at the start of the year. A number of customers cancelled deliveries at the last minute this year and when we have planned cash flow forecasts etc. it does cause us some problems. We then sell these spare clefts as extras to other customers who will want them again next year.
I will still need to agree any order by email please or in a meeting and if anyone does want to reduce their numbers it will not be a problem. I was going to reduce everyone’s orders for Grade 1, 1B, 2, 2B, 3, 4 and SS and HMM as we have produced so many less so far this year but I am hoping the ratios will improve in most of these grades so feel it is fairer to leave the numbers as 2014 unless you have reduced as above. However we did have some stock of Grade 1, 2 and 3 at the start of 2014 from 2013 and this will not be the case this year so there could be more monthly reductions again in those grades. I will do monthly updates as I have done this year and offer replacements when I can if we do not have the numbers of grades ordered, by being able to do this you can see we are still producing a good number just not in the right grades.
There are 15 different types of cleft available across the board. Wrights try and do the right thing and keep trying to replenish the willow trees but not everyone will be as thoughtful towards the future of willow supplies and just think about the immediate financial rewards and not the longevity. We deal with only 4 grades of willow and that's the top grades. Every one of our junior bats are made from adult clefts. That's why the butterfly1 clefts are so popular as you get great willow at affordable prices.
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Topic: Butterfly (Read 147939 times)