CERES Fair Wood provides highly ethically sourced timber

One of the oldest building materials can be one of the most sustainable. Timber is attracting plenty of attention from builders and architects as a great looking and potentially green alternative for their projects.

For those who want to go further than the local hardware chain to find a product that is genuinely ethically sourced and supports local environmentally minded producers — look no further than CERES Fair Wood.

Founded by renowned architect Paul Haar, social enterprise CERES Fair Wood selects its timber based on a simple set of criteria that foster well managed land, forests and trees, as well as providing a market for timber that would otherwise go to waste.

“The premise is that we only source the most sustainable stuff that we can through local and transparent supply chains,” general manager Hayden Cronin explained.

“We find timber that is grown in farm forestry and agro-forestry settings instead of, for instance, old growth or naturally regenerating native forest. We also approach small growers who want to diversify their farm enterprise.”

One of the aims is to encourage reforestation of previously cleared farmland, and Fair Wood consciously does not accept timber from operations such as farm clearing. Salvaged timber such as from trees that have fallen down naturally or been removed as a hazard are warmly welcomed.

“We’ve got a portable saw miller who works with us and he goes out, and with the recent storms, he’s got thousands of trees that are essentially lined up for him to turn into floorboards and other products. He calls it ‘the horizontal forest’,” Hayden says.

During the colder months Fair Wood also supplies firewood as well, because unfortunately not every tree can end up as an architect’s dream.

The organisation recently moved to a new warehouse in the northern Melbourne suburb of Preston, Melbourne, and is now expanding its stock with a variety of high quality-timber products.

One of the products on offer is Southern Blue Gum cladding that the team gets from a sustainable grower and family-owned sawmill within the local area.

“The wood is from a tree farmer nearby who has been growing Southern Blue Gum trees beautifully for the past 40 years, and we’ve bought two years of timber in advance, which is a little bit unusual for us,” Hayden said.

“But there’s all this absolutely stunning timber coming out of that, and it’s only two hours down the road.”