Repair for speaker cabinet

KEF’s service dept. might as well be bad AI. If anything is outside of their lane, they don’t have a clue! 
If you have an old school piano store in your area, maybe they can fix your R3 or give you a lead on who can.

All the best.

@rayray57 from JayJay53, my advice is a combination of (1) live with it and (2) repair it enough so that you can live with it. 
Tier 1: Get out a black magic marker and hide the raw wood

Tier 2: Get some Plastic Wood or other wood putty on it, and either layer it up to size or oversize it before sanding smooth and either staining or painting to match

Tier 3: Considering the difficulty of matching a piano black finish, consider the putty + sanding repair before painting them a whole new color, like yellow for the patio, or pink for a bedroom, etc. This option will result in a whole new speaker in which the damage is well-hidden. (My grandfather was famous for eventually painting all his old furniture.)

Best of luck any way you choose to go. 
(Any professional repair will likely run you low three figures, in my opinion.)

@rayray57 you didn't go wrong buying the R11. I have some in a Den system.  Perfect for music and Home Theater. 

Have you had work done by piano repair shop?

No, but I have black glossy speakers, similar to Wilson Puppy, and the piano repair shop would be the first place for me to check.  Trying to repair myself damaged surface with black epoxy could get very messy.

@kijanki my thoughts exactly. I used to be good when I was a kid and my hobby was building and painting model cars. Not so much anymore. I switched to detailing  cars and that’s my new hobby.  I will leave it to the professionals 😂