The bushfires that ravaged Australia not long ago have cut a wide swathe out of the existing fence infrastructure.
These gaps need to be plugged and the fencing industry has a lot of work ahead of it.
Fences made of timber and steel alike were devastated as the bushfires swept across New South Wales.
Timber fences were burned to ash, while some steel wire fences remained upright but lost a lot of their ability to function.
These are the observations of Gordon Bell from All Points Fencing about where he sees things heading in the future of cleaning up after these fires.
Gordon expects there to be plenty of steel fences moving forward, as local suppliers order more of it due to potential shortages of timber.
“There are local people that I’ve quoted for that have actually had trees down and they are happy to get rid of some, but the sawmills, I just got my last order and they said that will be it, and there might be a lock on forestry for twelve months or so.
“So a lot of these people might have to go to steel.
“I was told by the sawmill that they lost 80% of what they had booked in to log and that before it burned even more in the south, and then after that they said there would be a lock on logging. Not good.”
Gordon also had something to say about the expected job load over the foreseeable future in response to the fires.
“Even though it’s a good thing, with this blaze-aid, they’re solely there to help farmers put up fences.
“They’re taking work from the industry by doing that. Which short-term, everyone’s busy and it doesn’t matter, but it goes back to that long-term thin.
“You know in a year in a half, two years, there’s gonna be a hell of a lot of people here that could have been potential clients, which have had new fences from insurance.
“There are people from out of town that are coming in and doing a lot of stuff that we can’t fit in.”
“So it will be interesting times ahead.
“We’re all watching to see how it turns out across both New South Wales and Australia as they recover from those devastating blazes and repair the damage.”
This article was first published in The Fence magazine.