Senior Timber Assessor Steve Davis
With COVID-19 changing the way everybody lives, Western Australia’s Forest Products Commission’s Timber Auction has had to move with the times and go online. Forester – Senior Timber Assessor Steve Davis says it was unknown how successful this auction would be, given that logs and timber are natural products that all vary. Source: Timberbiz
“To add to these reservations, we couldn’t initially allow an inspection day due to restrictions,” Mr Davis said.
“Easing of the rules towards the end of the auction however, meant that we could allow for people to inspect the timber and this was done on the scheduled finish day for the auction.
“We moved the finish day to Tuesday to allow people to digest what they saw and place their bids. Customer’s took advantage of this, and the lovely weather, to check out what they intended to bid on and set about a bidding frenzy.”
The auction sold 80% of the lots that were on offer.
“It was fantastic to see considering some of the logs had been sitting around for some time and been through a number of auctions without interest,” Mr Davis said.
Prices received on some items exceeded the reserve price by a considerable margin.
A few sawn timbers lots were included which as well received a lot of interest.
“We set a new record for prices received for jarrah slabs,” Mr Davis said. “I don’t know if it was just beginners’ luck, but our first foray into on-line auctioning has been very successful.
“We’ll get to test this again, as I have a sawn timber only auction scheduled for the end of June/July and am hoping we can repeat the same success for this.”
The online auction means we can potentially reach a larger audience, with this auction boasting bidders from Denmark to Carnarvon.
