Confor’s APF 2014

The CONFOR APF Show is largest exhibition of silviculture & arboriculture (let’s call it forestry shall we?) in the UK with over 270 exhibitors & 20,000 visitors across the three days. It is enormous! We know, we walked round it, and round it, …

The CONFOR APF Show is largest exhibition of silviculture & arboriculture (let’s call it forestry shall we?) in the UK with over 270 exhibitors & 20,000 visitors across the three days.

It is enormous! We know, we walked round it, and round it, and round it…

On the 18th, 19th & 20th September 2014 the Confor APF extravaganza took over a lovely little corner of Warwickshire called the Ragley Estate, Alcester which was just about do-able from Sussex so we decided to make the pilgrimage along with the rest of the world of forestry.

The draw of forest machinery in action and the chance to meet up with old friends and colleagues was worth the early morning (lets face it, we’re used to early mornings!) so we made a day of it ‘en mass’, Bruce & Yogi, Dave & Paul, Andy, Tom & Keith.

Only Keith had been before. The rest of the gang were not prepared for the abundance of fancy new chainsaw boots, magic labour saving gizmos and timber sport shenanigans on show, but it was a great opportunity to get up to date on all the new forestry technology & equipment in the industry. There’s no doubt about it, foresters love new kit.

Tom took part in a Confor panel on woodland & timber certification in lowland UK in the Seminar Tent which is a pretty hot topic with the new Grown in Britain standard just out of the gate!

Here’s our day in photo’s, because words just aren’t enough when it comes to huge machines with teeth.

We started out at the Confor Tent (free tea & biscuits, why wouldn’t you!) and we found our friends at Grown in Britain

David, Tom & Paul fresh out of the four hour car ride and raring to go

The Confor Twitter Wall was keeping everyone up to date with APF going’s on. We caught prolific forestry tweeter @andyheald announcing Tom’s certification panel as we walked by #forestersuk

Confor were encouraging passersby to ‘post’ the old fashioned way, with an ‘it’ note

Lots of opportunity to learn something new at the free seminars from Forestry Commission and Confor

This one was on a hot topic concerning Round Timber Haulage and was hosted by the lovely Roland Stiven, Confor RT transportation maestro

Speaking of hauliers, look at the fantastic graphics on A W Jenkinsons vehicles, helping educate the public on what they’re doing with round timber & forestry. Beautifully clean too!

Telling the softwood RT story

Machines, makers, olympic sprinters running against timber sports athletes running up poles, automatically deflating and inflating RT lorry wheels, baby English trees in plugs ready for planting, tea kettles, armchairs, SmallWoods and an Exhibition of Wonderful things, what more could you want?!