Business Ideas & Best Practices

“The idea came from a trip through Norway and Iceland where my wife and I saw quite a few green roof structures on sheds and commercial buildings,” he said. “It triggered an idea that I wanted one at home.”

After 25 years working as a carpenter, John Price starting Smithfield Joinery in the year 2000, his son Leigh joining after his military service. Seven years ago, they implemented a woodland management plan for their acreage. They wanted the woodland to be able to work for itself – to be beautiful and useable at the same time. To do so required thinking about the future of the woodland, how it would be used, and how to maintain it.

Developed by missionary philanthropist John Enright, a co-op style honey initiative, is taking off in Zambia, and improving lives for the 10,000 individuals already involved.

After the Czech revolution in 1989, Václav Chara started his own company producing electrical cables and accessories, which quickly grew into a profitable company that continues to this day. But one day, when a nearby sawmill announced bankruptcy, Mr. Chara decided to buy it and invest in it.

Ever since his childhood, Maik Retz always felt at home in the forest. Growing up two hours west of Berlin in a rural farming and forestry area, he knew he wanted to make forestry his career. His father started a business producing firewood and fencing material more than 40 years ago, and Maik started working in the business in 1994. Maik now operates the business with his brother and one other employee.

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.

Dirk Jansen's workshop is a woodworker's paradise. He specializes in making solid wood doors, window frames, stairs, and outdoor wood decking. He has recently expanded into designing and building traditional timber structures for his clients.

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.