Twenty-Five Years of Empress Timber
On 1st November 2026, Empress Timber marks 25 years in the timber trade. Founder Phil Walsh looks back on a business that started in a spare bedroom in Euxton and now supplies some of the best-known names in the country.
Small beginnings
In November 2001 Phil Walsh set up a desk in the spare bedroom of his house in Euxton and started making calls. He already knew the timber trade inside out. He’d joined P. H. Haydock’s timber merchants in Chorley as a commercial apprentice and worked his way through every department, from the mill to the sales desk, before moving into hardwoods with James Webster & Sons. That’s where he built up the network of importers, agents and mills that Empress Timber still relies on today.
The idea was simple. Be the one phone call a buyer needs to make. Rather than holding stock, Empress Timber puts buyers and sellers together, using Phil’s knowledge of who has what, where, and at what quality.
Where the timber ended up
Twenty-five years on, that approach has taken Empress Timber’s products to some unlikely places. When the All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon refitted its corridors, it needed long consecutive runs of European oak with matching veneer so the colour carried right through. Empress supplied it through an Austrian mill that cuts veneer from the same forests as its sawn timber. Hardwood door blanks sourced by Empress have gone into Center Parcs lodges, local authority buildings across the UK and Ireland, and across the Atlantic to the New York Fire Department.
“The names are nice to have,” says Phil, “but the job’s exactly the same whether it’s Wimbledon or a joinery firm in Chorley. Find the right material, make sure it’s right for the job, get it there on time.”
What Empress Timber supplies
The core of the business is hardwood external door blanks made by Mill Panel in the Netherlands. Okoume veneers bonded around an aluminium vapour barrier, security tested, fire rated, FSC certified, with a ten-year stability guarantee and no core gaps so they can be machined at any point. Fire door and thermally insulated blanks are available with faces from plywood and MDF through to Tricoya.
Alongside the door blanks, Empress offers hardwoods from Europe, North and South America, Africa and the Far East, veneers and lay-ons, plywood, machined mouldings, Keruing lorry trailer flooring in 22mm and 28mm half lap, and constructional and marine timber, delivered nationwide.
Twenty-five trees for twenty-five years
Timber is the only building material that grows back, provided somebody plants it. So to mark the anniversary Empress Timber has dedicated 25 trees with the Woodland Trust, in grove two at New Moss Wood near Cadishead in Salford, one for every year in business. The Mill Panel door blanks Empress supplies are FSC certified and made under BM TRADA Q-Mark accreditation, and responsible sourcing has been part of how Phil works from the start.
“Timber is the only building material that grows back again if you plant it,” says Phil. “After 25 years of making a living from it, 25 trees felt like the least we could do.”
Twenty-five years and counting
In the timber trade, longevity is the sales pitch. Suppliers come and go. A business that’s been here 25 years, through recessions, a pandemic and the supply problems that followed, tells buyers it’ll still be here for the next order.
“I’d like to thank every customer and supplier who’s been part of the last twenty-five years,” says Phil. “A lot of them have been with us almost from the start and that’s what I’m proudest of.”
Empress Timber is based in Chorley, Lancashire. For enquiries, call 01257 269596 or 07974 753613.
