Business Ideas & Best Practices

James Thomson of Glenrothes, Scotland started Thomson Timber in 2007. Previously trained as a mechanical design engineer, he had worked in Australia and Edinburgh before returning home and taking up teaching woodworking for twenty years.

An Italian fertilizer company incorporated a Wood-Mizer LT40 sawmill to produce pallets to suit their specific requirements, not realizing at first the various ways the sawmill would provide opportunities for further growing their profits.

The WM1000, which can cut logs up to 1.7m diameter in the centre, was originally designed to meet demand for a cost-effective machine to saw tropical hardwood logs in Asia and Africa, but at Copford Farm Sawmill in Sussex it is proving its worth cutting large diameter oak prized for top grade joinery as well as quarter-sawn material for furniture.