About Chestnut Grove Sawmills

Populus Canescens was planted in small stands by the early settlers in the Eastern Cape as a fast, drought resistant source of building material on many of the farms.

Chestnut Grove Sawmills has been harvesting and saw milling poplar trees for the past 17 years, and the timber is finding increasing popularity with manufacturers and developers / builders.

The sawmills are based in the Eastern Cape where we source our poplar, pine and blue gum timber (cut to size) and we have a branch in Cape Town.

Today, Chestnut Grove Sawmills is the leading supplier of sawn Poplar & Blue gum to the Western and Eastern Cape, operating 6 state of the art Breakdown and Recovery saws.

Up to 70% of our work is repeat business from timber wholesalers, thatching companies and developers that we have built relationships with over the past 7 years.

Harvesting is arduous and expensive, and has only become possible since the arrival of the portable sawmill in the market. In most cases the stands of timber are quite small, there are no roads to the trees, and generally the plantings were made in steep kloofs alongside streams and rivers, which makes the extraction of large logs extremely difficult.

On occasion it is necessary to build the saw over the log in order to plank it.