A decade of auctions online

摘要

It came as a bit of a surprise to us at Beacon Forestry when we realised that it was ten years since we launched our electronic timber sales system and held the very first on-line timber auction in the UK. During the past ten years we have been responsible for 70 live electronic auctions and 68 on-line tender sales offering a total of 2.25m m3 of timber from state and private woodlands onto the open market; this is something we are proud of. Achieving sales for 1.9m m3 of it (worth just over ￡26m) has given us a success rate of 84%. This performance indicator shows there is still room for improvement but given the serious decline in timber prices towards the end of the 90s, and the subsequent market upheaval that this caused, we are inclined to think we can just about be satisfied with our overall performance.