Beam Lead Times: 15 to 25 Days for Standard Orders
Formwork programmes live or die on whether the beams arrive before the shutters are needed. Dongstar publishes two windows for its engineered structural beams: 15 to 25 days for standard orders and 20 toward 30 days for customised as standard ones. The two windows overlap between day 20 and day 25, which is the detail that makes a mixed order schedulable rather than a guessing game.
Key takeaways
- Standard orders run 15 to 25 days; customised orders run 20 to 30 days from the same published statement.
- The flange is North Europe solid wood spruce at 80 mm width and 40 mm thickness, which fixes the load path the beam is built around.
- Every beam carries a waterproof protective coating, and the ends can be colour-coded for production batch tracking.
- Reuse is described in words — "dozens of times" — with no figure attached, so plan the replacement pool on your own cycle data.
Reading the two lead-time windows
Fifteen to twenty-five days and twenty to thirty days are not competitor quotes; they are the same supplier's own published figures for two order types. The practical reading is that a standard beam is a production item with a settled specification, while a customised beam needs a setup decision that adds roughly five days at each end of the band. Between day 20 and day 25, both windows apply, which is where a phased order can use standard beams to open a programme and customised beams to finish it.
Scheduling against the far end of the band is the safer habit. A programme that assumes 25 days and receives a standard beam on day 18 is ahead of schedule; a programme that assumes 15 days and receives the same beam on day 24 has lost nine days it did not budget for. Nothing about the beam changes in those nine days — only the buyer's readiness to receive it.
What sits inside a beam: flange, web, coating and ends
The construction is described in four parts. The flanges are premium solid wood, the web is a multi-layer laminated plywood panel, the whole beam carries a waterproof surface coating, and Color-coated ends make production batch tracking possible. Those four elements explain the beam's practical behaviour: the flange carries the bending load, the laminated web holds the two flanges apart and resists shear, the coating keeps moisture out during storage and above a wet pour, and the end marking makes it possible to trace a beam back to the batch it came from.
For a site team the marking matters more than it sounds. Beams get mixed between deliveries, and a batch trace is the difference between a confident conversation about a damaged unit and an argument. The page lists the beams under several names, including timber formwork beams, H20 formwork beams and wooden formwork beams, and describes them as compatible with international formwork systems, which means the dimensional conventions are the ones the site already uses.
Why the flange is specified in millimetres
The published flange dimension is 80 mm wide by 40 mm thick, in North Europe solid wood spruce. Giving the width and the thickness to the millimetre is unusual in marketing copy and normal in engineering drawings, and it exists because the flange is what the beam is checked against. A nail plate closes onto it, a clamp grips it, a prop head bears on it. If those interfaces change by a few millimetres, the accessories stop fitting and the beam stops being compatible.
The species matters for the same reason. Spruce from northern Europe is straight-grained and works predictably, which is why the flange can be defended as a load-bearing member rather than an unknown softwood length. Buyers who compare beams on price alone should compare the flange section first, because a thinner or narrower flange produces a lighter, cheaper beam with a lower bending capacity — a difference that only appears when the span is loaded.
Reuse, and why the page avoids a number
The page states that the beams can typically be reused dozens of times. It does not state a figure, and that is a more honest position than a fixed count, because reuse depends on site handling, stripping practice, storage and how often the beam is loaded near its limit. A programme that strips carefully and stores on flat ground will see more cycles from the same beam than one that drops them onto rubble.
Buyers should convert the wording into a planning decision rather than a promise. Treat the first order as the working set, track how many units are retired per pour, and let that rate size the replacement order. The waterproof coating is what makes this pool viable — it resists moisture, wear and concrete adhesion, so a stripped beam can go straight back into the next cycle instead of waiting for cleaning.
| Item | Published value | Planning consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Standard lead time | 15–25 days | Programme from day 25 for safety |
| Custom lead time | 20–30 days | Overlaps the standard band between days 20 and 25 |
| Flange | North Europe solid wood spruce, 80 mm × 40 mm | Fixes clamp, nail plate and prop interfaces |
| Web and coating | Multi-layer laminated plywood web; waterproof surface coating | Shear resistance and cycle-to-cycle protection |
| Ends | Colour-coded ends for batch tracking on request | Traceability across deliveries |
| Order routes | OEM/ODM, samples for evaluation, trial orders supported | Lets a new distributor test before committing |
Worked example: turning a lead-time band into a delivery calendar
Suppose a project needs its first beam delivery on site by day 30 and the beams are a standard specification (example schedule). The published standard window is 15 to 25 days, so an order placed on day 1 lands between day 16 and day 26 — inside the site date with four days of slack at the worst end, calculated as 30 − 26 = 4. The same order placed on day 10 lands between day 25 and day 35, and now the far end misses the date by 5 days.
The flange section is worth checking in the same pass. Two flanges of 80 mm × 40 mm give a cross-sectional area of 2 × (80 × 40) = 6,400 mm², or 64 cm² of spruce per beam section (example arithmetic). Over a 4 m beam that is 6,400 mm² × 4,000 mm = 25,600,000 mm³, about 0.0256 m³ of flange timber, before the plywood web and any trimming are counted (example). Those are the numbers that decide whether a lighter beam can do the job or whether the specified section has to be held — and they are checkable against the published flange dimensions rather than estimated from a photograph.
Frequently asked questions
What decides whether a beam order is standard or customised?
Any deviation from the standard build. A standard order is the published beam with its spruce flange, laminated plywood web, waterproof coating and optional colour-coded ends, and it runs 15 to 25 days. Change the section, the marking or the packing and the order moves into the 20 to 30 day window.
How many times can a beam be reused?
The page describes reuse as typically dozens of times and does not publish a fixed figure, because the real number depends on stripping method, storage and loading. Track retirements per pour on site and size the replacement order from that rate rather than from a quoted count.
Can a buyer see a beam before placing a bulk order?
Yes. Samples are offered for evaluation, and trial orders are supported for new distributors and project contractors. The minimum order for beams depends on the specification and the destination, so it is quoted against the enquiry rather than fixed in advance.
Planning the beam order around the pour schedule
Buyers who need to check the construction against their drawings can read the group's manufacturing profile for the production background, and the wider panel catalogue for the plywood sheets that travel with the same formwork system. Ordering an H20 Timber beam against a known pour date, rather than against a delivery month, is the version of the order that survives contact with a site programme.
Lead times, materials and order conditions quoted in this piece are published on the supplier's website, reviewed on 29 September 2026, as the source for this comparison[1].