A DREAM COME TRUE

It was back in 1996 that Mr Tenson Yoong built his first particleboard production line; a single-opening 2.5x22m Raute press with Schenck forming station. That line was intended to be the first of several wood processing operations to be built on the 132-acre site in Gemas and was thus the first stage of Mr Yoong's dream of an integrated rubberwood processing complex there. On November 1, 2006, stage two was realised with the first commercial production coming from the latest major investment, a 405,0000m³/year continuous particleboard production line from Dieffenbacher adjacent to the first, Raute, line. So far, these remain the only factories on the HeveaWood Industrial Park, so Mr Yoong has a little longer to go before he realises his overall 'dream'.

However, long-term regular readers will know that this man does not only have two particleboard lines to his credit, but, through a wholly-owned subsidiary, also has extensive ready-to-assemble (RTA) furniture manufacturing facilities under the HeveaPac name in Seremban, about 60 to 90 minutes' drive north of Gemas towards Kuala Lumpur. Established in 2001, HeveaPac has continually expanded on the Seremban site, with Mr Yoong buying up two neighbouring properties as they became available to continue the expansion. The undercover area of the factory has been trebled in the last six years. Factory one at Seremban mainly produces hollow core panels with particleboard frames and thin MDF faces. These are mainly for export to the Japanese market. This factory was equipped with three automatic framing machines and two Homag automatic double-end trimming and edging lines in March 2007 to increase throughput and efficiency. Factory two makes all the solid particleboard panel RTA furniture, using HeveaBoard particleboard from Gemas. Factory three comprises a warehouse and dormitories accommodating 1,200 foreign workers. Between them, the three factories cover around 100,000m2 and employ 1,300 people. "Our customers are mainly hypermarkets which want high-volume, affordable household furniture," said Mr Yoong. "These are essential items such as book shelves, computer work stations, wardrobes and so on." The word "affordable" is particularly important to Mr Yoong, who carefully avoids calling his furniture "cheap" - not the same thing at all - although he admits that his products are often bought in the hypermarket on impulse because of their low price and functionality. "We started as a contract manufacturer with Kmart and Walmart and now the main buyer in the US is Target, another home hyperstore chain, as a qualified registered vendor. In the UK, Tesco and ASDA (owned by Walmart) are the main buyers, while in France it is the internationally-operating Carrefour. Exports account for around 80% of HeveaPac's production and the HeveaBoard Group has set up representative offices in the Philippines, Hong Kong, China, Korea, Indonesia and Vietnam. HeveaPac uses HeveaBoard particleboard for all its production and has four lines at Seremban for applying paper lamination to the panels. Nothing is wasted, with the trims from RTA panel production being used in the core frames of the hollow core furniture panels, once the paper facing has been sanded off. Travelling 130km south to Gemas, we reach the HeveaWood Industrial Park and the new particleboard factory. Gemas is in the centre of a FELDA (Federal Land Development Agency) rubberwood plantation scheme, with 300,000ha of plantation around the factory. Investment in line 2 was RM270m (US$83m) and this allows HeveaBoard to qualify for tax exemption, under Investment Tax Allowance (ETA), equivalent to 100% of the qualified investment made. In 2005, HeveaPac won the Export Excellence Award, leading to RM43m in tax incentives under the Allowance for Increased Export (AIE). In total, the group expects to achieve over RM80m in tax savings in the near future. Other awards won by the HeveaBoard group include the 2005 Productivity Award and various customer awards such as Best Supplier. HeveaBoard has also invested over the years in R&D, as well as working with research organisations such as FRIM (the Forestry Institute of Malaysia), Universiti Putra Malaysia, the Malaysian Timber Industry Board and the Malaysian Timber Council. The company itself invests around two million ringgit a year in R&D. Another achievement for the company was in becoming the first particleboard manufacturer in Malaysia to be certified to the Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) A5908/2003 Super E0. Of course emissions from the boards themselves are only part of the story - emissions from the production process itself and the efficient use of resources, particularly energy, are just as important these days. With this in mind, the company installed a new energy plant for Line 1 in 2005. This was a Vyncke plant and was set up in cooperation with the ministry of Energy, Water and Communications in conjunction with a United Nations Development Project. The financing of the energy plant was obtained by security provided jointly by the ministry and the UN and the cost is being repaid by HeveaBoard out of the consequent savings in energy. It is planned to pay off the loan by 2010. "This gave us a lot of experience about heat value that can be generated from biomass fuel such as rubberwood bark generated in the production process. It enabled us to have a balanced material supply/heat value calculation and transfer handling system for line 2, learning from our experience with line 1," said Mr Yoong. Line 2 was supplied by Dieffenbacher, which took responsibility for the complete design, supply and installation. The energy plant formed part of that contract, being supplied by Intec Engineering. "We gave Intec the data from our line 1 plant and they used that to design the energy plant for line 2," said Mr Yoong. "We are saving about one million ringgit a month in fuel costs." So, with the start-up of the continuous line, another stage of Tenson Yoong's 'dream' has been realised but this is not a man to stop dreaming - there is always more to be done and now his son is also dreaming the dream and running HeveaBoard. Of course there is a lot of space at the Gemas site and the hollow core panels do utilise thin MDF which has to be bought in.......