The following is an extract from our chat at the Royal Welsh Show with Oxdale Products' Philip Shufflebottom. You can watch the full interview on our YouTube channel. 

OXDALE Products is a brand many will recognise from this year’s show season, and once again it had brought along a mix of machines to the Royal Welsh Show. 

This included its PTO400 Log Splitter, several log cleaners and Del Morino chippers.

“All our log splitters are made in the UK,” said sales and dealer development manager, Philip Shufflebottom. “Everything from the tables to the powder coating is done by us. They are very simple machines; they don’t need anyone technical to use them. They are very reliable.

Forestry Journal: Oxdale also showed off its range of log cleaners and flail mowers Oxdale also showed off its range of log cleaners and flail mowers (Image: FJ/Jack Haugh)

“We have people coming onto the stand, using machines they bought 12 years ago. Our machines aren’t two-year machines; they are long-lasting products.”

Having shipped more than 30,000 machines from its Chesterfield base, Oxdale has established itself in forestry circles. And recent trends towards biomass have only seen its market share grow. 

"It seems to hit just about every market, luckily," Philip added. We have a lot of forestry customers, and a lot of hire fleets have them. A lot of smallholders with wood processors will use these as well; whether that's at a static location or down in the wood. You don't need anything but a little bit of petrol to keep them going. 

"Since the biomass boilers came around, sales have gone up quite a lot in the UK. Before that, it was mostly into Europe. 

"When you want to split something at one metre tall, in Europe they would do that and store them in billets, which wasn't really popular here. Now biomass boilers will take a lot larger capacity, so people don't want to be splitting it into just 12 inches high."