Kiln drying services needed

Yeah, I checked in there first and have written to everyone in Fl and a couple in GA - thinking maybe I could bring it in at Savanah and then ship it down here. So far no one has answered. The ones that are in FL are all actually doing something other than drying lumber for people, i.e they do flooring and on their websites, don't offer kiln services, but are listed in Woodweb as Sawing and Kiln Drying.

Just trying to be proactive!

Dave

Bernie

Dave,

How does purchase price + freight costs + custom kiln drying cost compare to just simply buying it from a supplier in the USA. Does risk outway the savings?

Dave

Bernie,

It's a developing story.

The original quote for tectonis grandis (genuine teak) from my local supplier was $24/bf.

I suppose this is for genuine Burmese teak from Burma (Myanmar) which is currently not being imported, hence supply & demand driving up the price.

I got on Tradekey.com, an international trading website, became a free member, posted a buy request and the next day had an answer querying exactly what I wanted.

By the following day, I had a quote of $1,760 for a cubic meter (m3 or 423.7 BF) of genuine teak, plantation grown in Tanzania. I asked for FAS quality but was told it's FEQ (first export quality - which I have had a hard time getting defined exactly). Min order is 10 cubic meters. Then I got the shipping cost, customs cost which total about $6,000 for a 40 ft container with about 24 cubic meters (10,000 bf). This teak comes with 25% MC max (it's air dried in Tanzania). So that covers all costs to Miami and through customs, but without inside the US trucking or kiln drying and comes to $4.76 per BF.

So then I started looking for someone to kiln dry this lumber from 25% MC to 6-8% MC and work out the trucking costs from whatever port I bring it in to to the kiln and from there to Clearwater.

Further, on Tradekey I originally asked for only about 3500 BF which is what I need for my current project. 10,000 bf is about 3X the amount of wood I actually need but I thought if the going price for teak in the US is $24.00/BF I could sell 1/2 of it at $15.00 to my US suppliers who want to charge me $24.00 per BF make $75,000 on that and essentially get the wood for I need for my project free, have 1500 BF of teak sitting here so I can offer genuine teak for other projects and make $25,000 on the importing cycle itself. This seems to qualify as "too good to be true".

My original supplier sharpened his pencil and his price came down to $22.

Then, yesterday, I found an importer in the US who will sell me 5,000 bf of Central American plantation grown tectona grandis at 10% MC FEQ cut to my dimensions for $4.75/BF + trucking from Miami. For less than 5000 bf (e.g. 3,500 BF) he wants $6.25/bf + trucking costs from Miami. He is a wholesaler and doesn't want to sell small amounts (defined as less than 1/2 a container or 5,000 BF).

I have requests to my local suppliers to see if they want to purchase 5,000 bf at $15.00, and have not gotten any answers either way though it's only been a day.

So the dew is coming off the roses, it seems like the smart thing for me to do is go with the $4.75 per BF from the US supplier. I am still "saving" about $17/BF off what my normal suppliers are selling for and I can zip down to Miami and see what this stuff is before I take the plunge.

There is still something wrong with this picture. I can't believe my local suppliers are making 75% mark-up on me (i.e. paying $5.00 and selling at $22), so either they don't know about about this plantation grown teak and how inexpensive it is, or, there's something not quite good enough about African or Central American plantation grown burmese teak, or there is a serious communication problem between various entities in these supply chains.

I still need to pull the string to find out what the real scene is and why that may be.

There you have it, my foray into importing wood - up to the minute.

Looks to me like it's already conquered territory by people with the communication lines to do it - but it's always an option.

Dave

Gary

Dave just curious, It's been three weeks. What did you do about your teak?

Dave Revell

Member

Well... I have determined that the teak from central america is substandard for high quality marine grade applications. It is definitely teak but it's being cut too young - like 10-20 years old. The annular rings (underlined next 5 words) in the sample I got are about 1/4" apart, whereas the annular rings on the "genuine burmese teak" that I also got several samples of are consistently about 1/16" apart - and the finished wood is much more "together".

So I now have a US supplier of teak at about $17.90 bf - still an improvement from $21.98. I found another line with a company that does teak reclaimed from building demolitions in the UK - min order 15 cubic meters or 6500 BF - that I can get for circa $10.50/BF plus shipping.

Still on it - it's not my main line of production, more an upcoming project.

At this point I budgetted it at $17.90 and will keep plugging away at it.

Dave