Wood Shavings for Animal Bedding, Biomass & Packaging

Specifications

A useful by-product of our own sawmill

Every pine or eucalyptus log that comes through our sawmill in Berdoias goes through debarking, sawing and planing before it becomes structural timber, boards or packaging components. Those same operations naturally generate shavings — small flakes of wood produced by planing and mechanical cutting. Rather than treating it as waste, we collect, screen and store it to give it a useful second life, in the same way we do with our wood chips for biomass and the bark that goes into our decorative mulch lines.

This full use of the tree — from the trunk down to its finest by-product — reflects how a family sawmill that has spent generations processing Galician timber works. We add no additives, dyes or chemical treatments to the shavings: what leaves our facility is exactly what results from the mechanical work on the wood.

We store shavings under cover to protect them from outside moisture and keep quality consistent across production batches. Because they are generated continuously as part of our day-to-day sawing activity, the volume available varies with the mill's production rhythm, so we recommend that buyers with recurring needs agree a supply schedule with us in advance to avoid stock gaps — particularly ahead of higher-demand periods such as winter for biomass buyers or peak season for livestock operations.

Species and characteristics

We work mainly with Galician pine and eucalyptus, two fast-growing species widely available across the region's forests. Each gives the resulting shaving a slightly different character: pine tends to produce a somewhat more resinous, golden-toned flake, valued in animal bedding for its characteristic scent, while eucalyptus yields a lighter, paler shaving with good absorbency.

The mix of species in any given batch depends on what the sawmill is processing at the time, so if your application calls for one species specifically — avoiding pine resin in certain bedding uses, for example — we can adjust supply to order.

Beyond species, which part of the log the wood comes from has a modest effect on the finished shaving's texture: wood closer to the bark tends to produce a slightly more fibrous flake, while heartwood produces a more compact one. In practice these differences do not affect most standard uses, but we take them into account when a customer requests an especially uniform batch for sensitive applications, such as bedding for young animals or delicate breeds.

Colour and moisture also shift a little through the year: shavings produced from freshly felled logs in wetter months can run slightly higher in moisture than shavings from timber that has had longer to air-dry in the yard before milling. Buyers using the material for animal bedding or as biomass fuel who need a drier batch can ask us to hold stock under cover for longer before dispatch, or to prioritise material from drier production runs.

Quality, screening and dust control

How useful a shaving is depends heavily on how clean it is and how free it is from excess dust, oversized chips or foreign material. That is why we screen the product to separate out the finest particles — the ones that generate dust — from usable-sized flake, and to remove any larger bark or wood fragments that may have slipped through.

The result is a consistently textured shaving with low dust content, suitable both for bedding animals sensitive to airborne dust and for packaging applications where a clean material that will not soil the protected goods is essential. We do not work with shavings from treated, painted or engineered wood — all material comes from solid logs processed at our own sawmill.

Screening is carried out in stages, with mesh size adjusted to the material's intended use: for animal bedding we favour a finer screen that removes most of the dust, while for packaging fill we allow a slightly coarser, more mixed grade, since volume and cushioning capacity matter more than flake fineness in that application. This lets us offer different quality grades within the same product line without running separate production processes for each use.

Because dust is such a common quality complaint with wood shavings, we check each new intake visually and by feel before it goes into storage, looking for consistent flake size and colour and setting aside material that shows signs of contamination from bark, staples or other debris picked up during handling. This inline check, on top of screening, is one of the reasons repeat customers in the equestrian and poultry sectors tend to stay with the same supplier rather than switching between sources.

Uses by industry: from the stable to the biomass plant

Wood shavings are a versatile material with applications across several industries:

• Livestock and equestrian: absorbent, comfortable bedding for stables, boxes and stalls, valued for its absorbency and low dust content.
• Poultry and small animals: litter for poultry houses, hatcheries and breeders of rodents and other small pets.
• Biomass and fuel: raw material for biomass stoves and boilers, or as a complementary input in pellet production — see also our wood chips for industrial biomass.
• Packaging and logistics: protective cushioning fill for fragile goods in boxes and transport containers.
• Landscaping and gardens: ground cover and mulch, alongside our decorative mulch and bark range.
• Composting: a carbon-rich structural material for domestic and industrial composters.

In the packaging sector, shavings are used inside both cardboard boxes and wooden crates to protect irregularly shaped items — ceramics, glassware or machinery parts — during transport, conforming to the shape of the goods better than some more rigid filler materials. Many of our customers combine several of these uses within the same operation: it is common, for instance, for a livestock farm to use shavings as bedding through the winter and then move the used material on to composting or biomass once it has served its purpose. We size each order to fit this kind of combined need, from one-off deliveries for small breeders to regular scheduled supply for biomass plants or larger livestock operations.

Responsible forestry origin

All the wood shavings we supply come from pine and eucalyptus managed across the forests of Galicia, a region with decades of tradition in balancing timber harvesting with forest renewal. Our work as a family sawmill is aligned with the sustainable-forestry principles promoted by schemes such as FSC and PEFC, and we follow the technical resources published by the FAO's forestry programme to keep our activity in context within the wider international forestry sector.

Regionally, we also refer to the forestry information published by the Xunta de Galicia's forestry authority, a standard reference for understanding the forest management framework our sawmilling operates within. As a by-product of sawing — rather than the output of a process dedicated solely to producing it — shavings also represent a more efficient use of the tree, reducing the volume of material that would otherwise need to be managed as waste.

Forest management in Galicia combines privately owned land, community-owned forest holdings and land managed by forestry companies, a model that has kept active timber production running alongside continuous forest renewal for decades. As a sawmill that buys standing timber and also carries out forestry work — felling, transport and reforestation — we know first-hand where the wood we process comes from, which lets us respond to customers who need information on raw material origin for their own supply chains.

Export and logistics across Europe

We ship wood shavings from our facilities in A Coruña to buyers across Europe, including Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Ireland. The supply format — loose bulk by truck, big bag or compressed shrink-wrapped bale — is chosen according to order volume, available transport and the buyer's receiving conditions.

Unlike solid wood packaging materials (pallets, dunnage), loose wood shavings used as packaging fill are generally not subject to the same ISPM 15 / NIMF-15 phytosanitary treatment requirements that apply to solid dunnage wood, though we always recommend confirming current rules for the destination country before shipping, particularly for exports outside the European Union. We work with standard international trade terms (EXW, FOB or delivered) and prepare the transport documentation each shipment requires.

For shipments within the European Union, paperwork is usually limited to a delivery note, commercial invoice and, on request, documentation on the wood's origin. For destinations outside the EU, such as the United Kingdom, we add whatever customs documentation applies to that shipment. We prepare this paperwork in Spanish and English and coordinate loading with hauliers experienced on long-distance European routes, always communicating delivery times as indicative ranges rather than guaranteed dates. Over long hauls, a compressed, shrink-wrapped bale is usually the most space-efficient format, since it takes up less room than loose shavings and protects the material from moisture in transit; for smaller or more local orders, loose bulk or bagged supply is often more practical.

Why choose Maderas Caamaño

We are a family-run sawmill and timber merchant with generations of experience working Galician pine and eucalyptus. Because we control the whole process — from buying standing timber through to sawing and planing — we can offer a consistent shaving supply with full traceability over where the wood came from and how it was produced.

That integration also lets us adjust volumes, packaging formats and delivery frequency to match each customer's needs, from a local equestrian yard to a European distributor needing regular restocking. If your project also calls for other sawmill by-products, take a look at our wood pellets for biomass heating, which many customers order alongside shavings to cover different energy and bedding needs.

Working directly with the producer — with no intermediary between sawmill and buyer — also means more commercial flexibility: we can consider trial orders for new customers, adjust delivery frequency as a trading relationship grows, and match supply terms to each buyer's logistics setup. If you are unsure which format or volume best fits your operation, get in touch directly and we will advise you with no obligation.

We also keep communication straightforward: a single point of contact handles quotes, order confirmation and delivery scheduling, so buyers are not passed between departments for routine questions. For first-time export customers, we are happy to talk through packaging options, likely lead times for a given route, and any documentation questions before an order is confirmed. That same team also handles our other sawmill by-products, so a single conversation can often cover a mixed order of shavings, chips and pellets.

Applications & uses

• Stable and equestrian bedding
• Poultry house litter
• Biomass fuel and heating
• Protective packaging fill
• Garden mulch and ground cover
• Composting bulking material
• Bedding for small pets and rodents

Gallery

Frequently asked questions