How is the crisis in Ukraine affecting care home furniture in the UK?

Across the UK almost everything is being affected in some way by the ongoing crisis in Ukraine and care home furniture is unfortunately not exempt from this.

We just want to take a couple of minutes to explain a few ways in which care home furniture is being affected by price increases, rising energy costs and supply challenges.

Surging raw material costs

One of the main reasons that care home furniture is being affected by the crisis is the soring costs of timber! Russia has the largest area of forests in the world with more than 1/5 of world trees being in Russia and in response to sanctions from the West following the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has introduced an export ban on over 200 product lines which bans all Russian companies from exporting certain goods overseas. This export ban includes Birch Hardwood products, which is the go-to wood for chair manufacturing due to its high quality and strength.

Russia produces the highest quality softwood and birch hardwood in the world and this sanction has caused significant price increases on timber across the UK. For example, in the past week alone we have experienced price increases on timber components for our chairs of over 17% and up to as high as 23% on some components with more increases expected in the near future.

Rising energy costs

As the entire UK experiences record price increases on energy this is greatly impacting businesses and factories across the UK as they use a substantial amount of energy to run machinery to ensure that goods are produced. With energy prices rising as much as 100% in some cases these extra costs have to be, again, passed onto the customers.

Data taken on 15/03/2022.

I trust this article has been helpful in explaining how the crisis in eastern Europe is affecting furniture in the care home market but if you do still have some questions, we are more than happy to help you, either contact us via the button below or use our live chat in the bottom right of this page and we will be more than happy to go through your questions with you.

Who is Edison & Day?

We are a UK manufacturer of care home furniture and have been supplying the market with high-quality furniture for 15 years, we create furniture and experiences that have the personal touch.

We have the largest care home furniture selection in the UK that is available to order online and with our industry-leading Dayex service, you can have your new furniture in as little as 5 working days.